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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 



Uniform fottrj tijis Folume, 



I. NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 

A Course of Lectures. By J. W. Dawson, LL.D. i2mo. $1.75. 

* " Professor Dawson discusses his topic from the various standpoints of a student 
of nature, not from the single standpoint which has mostly been occupied by theo- 
logians. The book is not a partisan publication, It will be found by those opposed 
to be perfectly candid and fair, admitting difficulties in their full force, and not seek- 
ing to evade, misinterpret, or exaggerate any fact or argument." — Interior. 

II. CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM. 

A Series of Lectures. By James McCosh, D.D., LL.D., President 
of Princeton College. i2mo. $1.75. 

"This book grapples directly with the vital questions. Every reader must admire 
its fairness. It is all the better adapted to popular reading from having been written 
to be delivered to an audience. Indeed, the thinking is generally so clear, and the 
style so animated and luminous, that any person of average intelligence and culture 
may understand and enjoy the discussion; and no such person who has begun to read 
the work will be likely to rest satisfied till he has finished it." — Independent. 

III. CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

A Series of Lectures. By Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., of Harvard 
College. $1.75. 

"One of the best books we have read in a long time, — a manly, candid, noble, rea- 
sonable defence of the Christian faith. We do not see how any thoughtful person can 
read it in vain. Dr. Peabody plants himself fairly on the very postulates of scientific 
men, and proceeds to show how all that they claim for true science is fulfilled in the 
religion of Jesus." — Illustrated Christian Weekly. 

IV. THE RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 

A Series of Lectures. By Henry Calderwood, LL.D., of Edinburgh 
University. $1.75. 

" A careful perusal of these lectures leaves the im'fression that it is not science, but 
the crude speculations and unwarranted inferences of scientists and their ill-instructed 
followers, that conflicts with religion. True science supports and confirms religious 
truth." — N. Y. Evangelist. 

V. PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

A Series of Lectures. By Prof. George S. Morris. $1.75. 

ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS. 



V 



o 









Philosophy and Christianity 

a Series of Hectares 

Delivered in New York, in 1883, on 

THE ELY FOUNDATION OF THE UNION 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 



S 



GEO. S. MORRIS, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ETHICS, HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, AND LOGIC, IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF MICHIGAN, AND LECTURER ON ETHICS, AND THE HISTORY OF PHI- 
LOSOPHY, IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE 



6,tSr^ 






NEW YORK 
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS 

530 Broadway 

1883 



•ill 



Copyright, 1883, 
By Robert Carter & Brothers. 



Cambridge: 
St. Johnland prgss „y 

Stereotype Foundry, Wilson & Son. 

Suffolk Co., N. Y. 



PREFACE. 



This series of lectures was delivered, by appointment, as 
the fifth course on the foundation established in the Union 
Theological Seminary by Mr. Zebulon Stiles Ely, in the 
following terms: — 

" The undersigned gives the sum of ten thousand dollars to 
the Union Theological Seminary of the city of New York, 
to found a lectureship in the same, the title of which shall 
be ' The Elias P. Ely Lectures on the Evidences of 
Christianity.' 

"The course of lectures given on this foundation is to com- 
prise any topics that serve to establish the proposition that 
Christianity is a religion from God, or that it is the perfect 
and final form of religion for man. 

" Among the subjects discussed may be, — 

"The Nature and Need of a Revelation; 

"The Character and Influence of Christ and his Apostles; 

"The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scriptures, Mira- 
cles, and Prophecy; 

"The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity; and 

" The Philosophy of Religion in its Relation to the Christian 
System. 

" Upon one or more of such subjects a course of ten public 
Lectures shall be given at least once in two or three years. 
The appointment of the Lecturer is to be by the concurrent 



vi PREFACE. 

action of the directors and faculty of said Seminary and the 
undersigned; and it shall ordinarily be made two years in 
advance. 

" The interest of the fund is to be devoted to the payment 
of the Lecturers, and the publication of the Lectures within 
a year after the delivery of the same. The copyright of the 
volumes thus published is to be vested in the Seminary. 

" In case it should seem more advisable, the directors have 
it at their discretion at times to use the proceeds of this fund 
in providing special courses of lectures or instruction, in place 
of the aforesaid public lectures, on the above-named subjects. 

"Should there at any time be a surplus of the fund, the 
directors are authorized to employ it in the way of prizes for 
dissertations by the students of the Seminary upon any of the 
above topics, or of prizes for essays thereon, open to public 
competition. 

"Zebulon Stiles Ely. 

"New York, May 8th, 1865." 

With the consent of Mr. Ely, and of the Faculty of the 
Union Theological Seminary, the following lectures were 
repeated, in the first month of the present year, at the 
Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. 

The Table of Contents is a reproduction, almost without 
change, of a ' ' Syllabus " of the course, which was distributed 
among the auditors. 

Figures, embodied in the text, refer to notes contained in 
the Appendix. 

June ii, 1883. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

LECTURE I. 

RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 

PAGE 

The main object of this course of lectures, to show that intelligence, 
as such, is the true bulwark, and not the enemy, of religion . . I 

Religion cannot — even if it would — withdraw itself from the liability 
of being made a subject of scientific or philosophic inquiry . . 2 

First, the phenomena of religion, without any reference to their 
absolute significance, may be made the subject of a comparative, 
inductive study, and the result is the Science of Religions ... 3 

Or, secondly, inquiry may be directed to the absolute significance 
and justification of the phenomena in question, and the result is 
the Philosophy of Religion 4 

Importance of this latter inquiry for religion 6 

Modern "Agnosticism," which results from a misapplication and 
misinterpretation of the method and conclusions of purely physical 
science, has the form of knowledge, without its substance ; from it • 
religion has nothing to fear before the forum of absolute intelli- 
gence 7 

The history of English Deism as partially illustrating the truth of 
the last statement 9 

Against Agnosticism, philosophy and religion have a common cause. 
In this negative sense the two certainly agree 1 1 

The more important question is, whether philosophy — which is, prop- 
erly, nothing but the unbiassed recognition and comprehension of 
experience on all its sides — confirms or invalidates the positive, 
theoretical presuppositions of religion 15 



viii TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

For religion — and, above all, Christianity — is, in form and substance, 
of and for intelligence. It presupposes and requires knowledge 
of the Absolute. And philosophy aims to achieve the same knowl- 
edge by the way of experimental demonstration 17 

Philosophy and Christianity alike imply (1) a process of intelligence 
(Theory of Knowledge), by which (2) the absolute object of in- 
telligence is reached (Theory or Science of Being) 19 

Plan of the following lectures 19 



LECTURE II. 

THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 

The philosophic theory of knowledge is, in ideal, nothing but the 
science of intelligence as such, or of experience in the fullest sense 
of this term 20 

This science not contained in Formal Logic. Nor is it contained in 
Empirical Psychology: — witness, the results of British psycho- 
logical speculation 23 

The " science of intelligence as such " is the necessary correlate and 
condition of the science of being as such; in other words, it is an 
organic part of Philosophy, and is found, in more or less com- 
pletely developed form, wherever philosophy is found .... 29 

Intelligence comparable to a light 32 

Intelligence is an activity, versus the old sensational theory that the 
mind in knowledge is passive, and like a " piece of white paper." 
The relation of subject and object in knowledge is not purely 
mechanical, or sensible . . 34 

The activity in question is synthetic. (Incidental discussion of space 
and time as forms of synthesis for intelligence). It is living and 
organic. It involves, in particular, the ideal continuity and unity 
of subject and object, within the sphere of knowledge, and not 
(as sensational agnosticism assumes) their mechanical separation 
and opposition outside the realm of all knowledge 39 

Hence, (1) the forms of the "subject" are the forms of the "ob- 
ject," and vice versa 46 

(2) Knowledge is a unifying process. It finds unity in the midst of 
apparent multiplicity. It sees the universal in the particular. 
Its object is thus the concrete universal, or the universal which 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix 

PAGE 

subsists through and by very means of the particular, and not the 
abstract universal, which excludes the particular and is never an 
object of real knowledge at all, but only of a supposititious im- 
agination 47 

Intelligence is itself a concrete universal, for it is an organism. 
Every natural organism is a direct illustration of the one subsist- 
ing only in and through the many, the one life in and through 
the many members. The "members" of intelligence are the 
forms or fundamental categories of knowledge, the framework 
of all our conscious intelligence. The "one life" stands self- 
revealed in self- consciousness 48 

Self-consciousness is the "light" of intelligence. It is a pure, ideal 
and spontaneous activity 45 

Self-consciousness is the active and relatively independent condition 
of objective consciousness. But objective consciousness, on the 
other hand, is also the (relatively passive) condition of self-con- 
sciousness 50 

Self-consciousness in man, while it is the organic head, or the 
"light," of all human consciousness whatsoever, turns out, upon 
examination, to be a borrowed light, and itself dependent on an 
Absolute Self-consciousness 52 

The philosophic science of knowledge confirms St. Paul's denial 
"that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of our 
[purely individual] selves," and finds, in further agreement with 
the Apostle, that, in the absolute and final sense, " our sufficiency 
is of God." 55 



LECTURE III. 

THE ABSOLUTE OBJECT OF INTELLIGENCE; OR, 
THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 

The question as to "what being really is," not a "tyro's question." 
Its practical importance 59 

The unity of Being is expressly or implicitly presupposed by all 
science 61 

Physical science seeks, not an absolute unity, but only a relative 
one 61 

The " universal," to which physical science leads us, is consequently 



V 



X TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

abstract, not concrete. Its picture of the universe is rnonocnro- 
matic. And pantheism, in the odious sense of this term, consists, 
essentially, in adopting the highest generalizations of mathe- 
matico-physical inquiry as the final results of philosophic science, 
and interpreting the unity of being, accordingly, as abstract, dead 
and mechanical, rather than as concrete, living and organic . . 63 

The terms being (or reality) and intelligence are correlative. The 
predicate being is applied to the object of intelligence. That 
most truly is, which is most truly known or knowable. The real 
is the intelligible 69 

The sensible, as such, (or as sensible) is not intelligible. It is 
"phenomenal." 7° 

The science of knowledge demonstrates the organic unity of "sub- 
ject" and "object," or of intelligence and being. Hence (1) 
the distinction made between intelligence and being is a purely 
formal or "logical" one, not real. Being, in other words, in- 
cludes intelligence 71 

(2) The nature of being, therefore, is not made known to intelli- 
gence by revelation from without, but from within, or from the 
inner depths of the nature of intelligence itself 72 

(3) The revelation of being in intelligence necessarily takes the form 
of self-intelligence, self-knowledge, or self-consciousness. Being 

is thus primarily revealed as spiritual 72 

(4) "Substance is Action" (Leibnitz). Or, Being is Activity, is 
Doing. It is activity of spirit. But the activity of spirit is Life 
(Aristotle). Absolute being, as such, is therefore absolutely 
living. No being whatsoever without " potency of life. " . . . 73 

Space, time, and matter are dependent modes of absolute spiritual 
existence. Materialism, in holding the contrary, errs, among 
other things, against the first principles of thought and of being 
(Unity of Being and Unity of Knowledge). The proximate root 
of matter is found in force; and force is a purely spiritual cate- 
gory. The law of the motions of matter is identical in kind with 
the law of the activity of intelligence 74 

Man, as man, is spirit 84 

The philosophic doctrine that the unity of being is the unity of Ab- 
solute Spirit, is the doctrine of Theism 85 

The unity of Absolute Spirit rests on a unity of self-consciousness, of 
personality . . 86 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. xi 

LECTURE IV. 

THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 

PAGE 

Peculiar reasons why the theological student is obliged to inquire 
after the final results of philosophic science 89 

He is entitled to have these results correctly reported to him ... 96 

Specific difference of philosophy and religion 98 

Christianity is a spiritual life, which the Scriptures represent as con- 
ditioned upon the knowledge of God 102 

According to the Scriptures, (1) knowledge that, in form and sub- 
stance, is purely individual, is relatively empty and, when carried 
to its final issues, " cometh to nought." The scriptural estimate 
of sensible knowledge 105 

(2) Knowledge proper is a spiritual process. This truth, which phil- 
osophic science expresses by saying that science is of and through 
the universal, is more concretely expressed — but without change 
of sense — by the Christian Scriptures in the declaration that our 
sufficiency to think is of God, or that true understanding is due 
to the inspiration of the Almighty 1 10 

" Perfect freedom" the attribute only of that "thought" which is 
"begun, continued, and ended" in God. The Christian theory 
of knowledge implies a God "near at hand." 1 15 

All knowledge is, in a sense, of the nature of "revelation." No 
merely mechanical revelation possible 118 

Revelation, as a process of knowledge, is a spiritual process. Its 
essential form is that of self- revelation, or of the Spirit to the 
spirit, and it is rendered possible only through the organic one- 
ness of the recipient with the divine spirit 119 

The content of revelation can not be out of essential relation to 
intelligence 120 

LECTURE V. 

BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY: — THE ABSOLUTE. 

The Absolute omnipresent in the relative, and yet distinct from the 

latter • 122 

The Absolute for religion, as for philosophy, is Spirit, and is God . 124 
God as the creative condition of space and time, and of " force." . 125 



Xll TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The Infinite as known, or knowable, in and by the finite . . . .129 
The Scriptures find in the personality of a transcendent Man the 
true revelation and perfect exemplification of the nature of the 

absolute and everlasting God 132 

The true understanding of Christ is a " spiritual understanding " .133 
Absolute Being, or Spirit, exhibited in the Scriptures under the at- 
tributes of intelligence, life, and love 135 

The triune God 138 

"Trinity " does not simply mean "threeness." The conception of 
trinity not a sensible, or phenomenal, but a spiritual conception. 
It is, accordingly, incapable of being sensibly illustrated . . . 141 

Trinity is concrete unity 143 

Intelligence, Life, and Love — each a triune process 145 

This process, in finite beings, subject to temporal limitations, from 

which, in God, the Absolute, it is free 153 

The Son and, through him, the world, as the object of the divine 

intelligence 157 

The Holy Spirit, as at once name of the third person in the divine 
Trinity and also the concrete and perfect name of the Absolute, 

or of God 158 

Brief defense of the expression, " Three persons in one God." . .160 



LECTURE VI. 

BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY: — THE WORLD. 

Philosophy of Nature and "Pure Physical Science" distinguished . 165 
Philosophic Agnosticism and Mechanism as perversions of pure 

physical science 169 

Religion presupposes, not a system of pure physical science, but a 

philosophy of nature 173 

Brief resume of the philosophy of nature 174 

Biblical conceptions: — 

(a) The world dependent for its existence on divine power 178 

(b) Creation not the result of a casual impulse or of an arbitrary determination 

on the part of the Creator 179 

(<r) God the everlasting worker. His relation to the world active and in- 
cessant 182 

(d) The world full of divine riches 186 

(e) Knowledge of the world to be *' sought out." 187 

(/) Vanity and corruptibility of the world apart from God ....... 188 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiii 

PAGE 

(g) Christ the Creator of the world, and 189 

(A) Also its Redeemer. Redemption included in the definition or conception 

of creation 192 

(z) The rationale of creation founded in the doctrine of the Trinity. The 

Second person of the Trinity as the " first-born of every creature." . . . 195 
(_/') Christ the " image of the invisible God " only as he is Creator and Re- 
deemer of the world 197 

(k) No limits of time placed on the divine work 198 

The foregoing conceptions opposed to pantheism 200 

False antithesis of "nature " and "the supernatural." 202 



LECTURE VII. 

BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY: — MAN. 

The Christian conception of man, on the two sides of his identity 
with nature, and of his distinction from and above nature . . . 204 

Christian ethics is the theory of the "perfect man." 208 

The experimental character of this theory; together with comments 
on a modern demand that "morals" should be "secularized" 
and "humanized." 212 

Christian conceptions : — 

(a) The world and the natural man (or " the flesh ") regarded as, respectively, 
the place and the instrumental condition of the realization of the perfect 

man 219 

(0) The birth of the spirit is the birth of the true man 227 

(c) The actual realization of the true man depends on a spiritual activity, on 
the part of man 229 

(d) This activity is conditioned upon knowledge 231 

(e) The object of this knowledge is "the will of God," which itself is nothing 
other than the law of absolute or perfected being, or, of the most perfect 
realization of the spiritual nature 233 

(/) Man's activity supported by the activity of God himself; man, therefore, 
a colaborer with God 235 

{g) Man finds the " dwelling-place " of his true self in God 240 

(A) That will alone is free which wills the true self, or, which wills itself in 
God 243 

(/) Man is "saved," or made "perfect man," "in Christ Jesus," and not 
merely by him. His redemption is a spiritual, and not a merely mechan- 
ical process 244 

Christian ethics not quietistic 250 



xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

LECTURE VIII. 

COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 

PAGE 

Religion "of and for intelligence." 252 

In what sense the like is true in regard to the works of artistic and 

political genius 253 

Religion as the living apprehension of that which philosophy aims 

to comprehend 258 

Faith as "abbreviated knowledge." 259 

Indispensable value, for philosophy, of the data contained in the 
"Christian consciousness; " together with remarks on the ques- 
tion whether philosophy can exist without the data which religion 

furnishes 260 

" Self-consciousness " as the principle or standard of measurement 
for the "philosophic content" of all "religions." 275 



PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

LECTURE I. 

RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 

I PRIZE highly the privilege of addressing you on 
the theme chosen for the subject of this course 
of lectures. At the same time I appreciate rever- 
ently the responsibility resting upon one who under- 
takes to deal with such a theme. We are about to 
lay inquiring hands upon the foundations of the most 
sacred and the purest interests of humanity — the 
interests of religion and intelligence. Deeper and 
more impregnable foundations than these, we may 
be sure, there are none. Whatever we may do, we 
cannot shake them. They constitute the rock of 
ages, which can never be moved. May we only be 
permitted, in our way and measure, to demonstrate 
— that means simply to point out, to show, to bring 
into clear and evident sight — anew what that rock 
is, and how religion and intelligence both rest upon 
it in harmonious union and to the complete satis- 
faction of man's highest, spiritual and intellectual 
needs. 

To-night we are, by way of introduction, to enter 
upon a more general, preliminary consideration of 

(1) 



2 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the relations which, from the nature of the case, may 
or must exist between religion and intelligence. 

And first we note that religion, even if it should 
be held to involve, in itself, no function of intelli- 
gence — nay, even though it were regarded as in- 
volving the complete subjection or abrogation of 
intelligence in the religious subject — cannot with- 
draw itself from the liability of being made an ob- 
ject of intelligence, i.e., of what is called intelligent 
or scientific inquiry and examination. To this lia- 
bility it is subject in common with every other con- 
ceivable phase, phenomenon, or incident of the world 
of reality in which we are placed. Intelligence, 
thought, knowledge, consciousness, must have its 
object. This object may be intelligence itself, or 
anything whatever that enters within the realm of 
man's conscious knowledge or experience. Its re- 
lation to intelligence may be purely, or, at all events, 
predominantly mechanical, external, accidental. Ob- 
jects in such relation are, for example, stocks and 
stones, in which, as first perceived, intelligence does 
not, in any especial degree, find itself reflected, or 
through the mere taking cognizance of which it does 
not find itself specially strengthened or built up. 
They are there, the intelligent subject is here — me- 
chanically separate from and independent of them. 
They are viewed as casual, not necessary objects of 
his intelligence. He takes note of them and ob- 
serves that they "are there," that they exist; per- 
haps, if he belong to a learned society or, for any 
other reason, be disposed to cultivate the scientific 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 3 

habit of mind, he enters into a more minute exam- 
ination of them; he subjects them to the test of fire 
and of hammer, and, after taking copious notes of all 
that he observes, is ready to inform the world re- 
specting the phenomena of stocks and stones. He 
has met the first requirement of intelligence respect- 
ing stocks and stones. He has ascertained and knows 
the immediate, sensibly demonstrable facts about 
them. But, I repeat, his relation to them is, so far, 
relatively and characteristically mechanical and ac- 
cidental. Certain "objects," " facts," or " phenom- 
ena " are brought — it may be either wholly fortui- 
tously, or in consequence of a systematic intention 
on the part of the inquirer — within the range of 
his observation, and he simply observes and records 
the first and direct result of his observation. 

Now anything whatever that comes within the 
range of conscious intelligence may and in the first 
instance must be made an object of intelligence, in 
the foregoing sense. The first and lowest, but, also, 
indispensable condition of knowledge, is, to be aware 
of the objects of knowledge; to take note that they 
are there, "before the mind" — as men say — or within 
the range of conscious experience, and then to ob- 
serve how, or with what phenomena they exist, 
under what guise and in what relations they im- 
mediately appeal. Now, religion "is there," ex- 
ists in history and among men, nations, and tribes at 
the present day Nay, what are called "religions" 
exist, with characteristic, visible marks of agreement 
or of disagreement among themselves. Upon them, 



4 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

as objects in purely mechanical relation to intelli- 
gence, the latter may fix its attention. It may do 
this in the same unbiased way, or with the same 
absolute freedom from presuppositions, with which 
it addresses itself to the analytic observation and 
description of rocks and trees. Looking at religion 
in its manifestations as one among the many differ- 
ent objects presented to intelligence, its first work 
will be to take accurate note of all these manifesta- 
tions, whatever they may be, whether existing in the 
form of myth or fable, of sacred legend or story, 
of dogma or of practice, of rites, ceremonies, etc. 
The result of all this praiseworthy and indispensa- 
ble industry will be what is called the " Science of 
Religions." From such mechanical relation to intel- 
ligence, religion — or, rather, religion viewed with 
reference to its visible or historic phenomena — can- 
not withdraw itself. 

But the forementioned industry — an industry like 
that of the ant, being devoted to the amassing and 
orderly arranging of multitudinous items of informa- 
tion respecting particular facts or classes of facts — is 
only the beginning of, or, better, the mere scaffold- 
ing for, the true and complete work of intelligence. 
It. is the first step leading to complete or absolute 
intelligence, or compreliension; but it is only that. 
I may, for example, know the names of all the classes, 
orders, families, genera, species, or what not, of liv- 
ing existences; I may be familiar with their habitats, 
their modes of life, their peculiarities of form, color, 
etc., and yet I may not know what life is. What I 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 5 

know is precisely the special modes, the phenomena, 
of life, these alone — but not what it is to live. The 
essence of life may still be to me a profound mystery. 
I may still be wholly unaware that, in Aristotle's 
just and pregnant phrase, " life is energy of mind." 
And so, too, with regard to stocks and stones, I am 
far from having absolute intelligencerespectingthem, 
when I am simply able to describe their immediate, 
phenomenal properties. In addition to their pos- 
session of these properties, these objects have this 
distinction, viz., that they exist, that they are, that 
they in some way possess being. In what way or 
sense do they exist} Wherein does their being con- 
sist ? They are, by common repute, material objects. 
But what is it to be material ? Is material existence 
absolute and independent existence ? Is there such 
a thing as absolute matter, wholly independent of and 
unrelated to spirit ? Or is what we call material ex- 
istence only a dependent function of Absolute Mind 
— apart, for example, (speaking in Berkeleian fashion) 
of the Logos, the word or language, through which 
the Absolute Spirit, God, expresses himself to his 
finite children ? These are questions to which in- 
telligence must find an answer, before its work can 
be called ideally complete. They are questions which 
are imposed upon intelligence, by virtue of its own 
nature. And questions such as these, relating to 
absolute essence and cause, are precisely those which 
form the special subject-matter of philosophy. 

Now just as little as religion can withdraw itself 
from the liability of being made the object of scien- 



6 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

tific observation and thus of being brought into at 
least a mechanical relation to intelligence, just so 
little can it evade the liability, nay, the necessity, 
of being brought into that nearer relation to intel- 
ligence which philosophic inquiry involves. The 
science of religions must be followed by the philoso- 
phy of religion. After learning what are the phe- 
nomena of religion, intelligent man must ask, What 
is religion ? Is it an hallucination, or a well-founded 
reality ? Is it a mirage, or do those who breathe 
its atmosphere constitute the true city of God on 
earth ? The question must and will be asked. Nay, 
it is asked, and has again and again been asked. 
Religion has been and is sure, over and over again, 
to be placed in the crucible of philosophic intelli- 
gence, and its votaries cannot with indifference look 
upon the result of this test. Shall this result be, 
in the language of a recent foreign writer, 1 that 
religion "is nothing more nor less than a belief in 
conflict with experience, and resting on the most ex- 
aggerated fancies," or that — in the words of him who 
may be regarded as the profoundest and most deeply 
experimental philosopher of modern times 2 — religion, 
in the territory of human consciousness, is "that re- 
gion, in which all riddles of the world are solved, all 
the contradictions of speculative thought are recon- 
ciled, all agonies of the feeling heart are allayed, — 
the region of eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal 
peace?" If any doubt exists as to the answer which 
real philosophy, real intelligence, real and complete 
experimental inquiry, gives and must give to this 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 7 

question, this state of things cannot but be looked 
upon by religion with the greatest concern. 

There is indeed a " knowledge that pufTeth up," 
or, rather, that is itself puffed up, being like a bub- 
ble, without real or absolute content and substance, 
and from which religion has, in the long run, noth- 
ing to fear. It is a "wisdom of this world" and 
of " the princes of this world, that come to nought." 
That is to say, it is a wisdom, a knowledge, all of 
whose categories or conceptions are derived purely 
from analytic observation of "this world" on the 
side of its absolute relativity, as sensibly presented 
in the conditioning forms of space and time; in short, 
as a world of relations which are purely and only 
finite. It boasts of being in the highest degree con- 
crete, while in reality it is in the highest degree ab- 
stract. For while it makes the foregoing boast, it 
declares with equal boastfulness — or else with mock- 
humility — that it considers only phenomena, and not 
absolute causes and essences. It abstracts — looks 
directly away from — the infinite and absolute, which 
the finite as well reveals as conceals, and by and 
through whose power and essence the finite is and 
has its nature. It abstracts, therefore, from the es- 
sential, from the absolute content and substance, 
in order to fix its attention exclusively upon the 
phenomenal sign or symbol. It reads the language 
of the absolute — for this is what we may call " this 
world " of sensibly finite relations — and ignores its 
meaning. And this is indeed nothing other than 
the legitimate work and method of pure mathemat- 



8 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ical and physical science, whose true and intelligent 
votaries, being aware of the special ontological limi- 
tations of their peculiar work and method, are also, 
and consequently, aware that these limitations prove 
nothing, pro or con, respecting the absolute limita- 
tions or range of intelligence. But there are those 
who seek — by usurpation, as it were — to make them- 
selves ''princes of this world"; i. e. y who adopt this 
realm of knowledge as their kingdom of intelligence; 
nay, who proclaim this to be the only and absolute 
kingdom of intelligence for man; and who, conse- 
quently — and very naturally — in the matter of ab- 
solute and final knowledge respecting essential truth 
and reality, "come to nought." Their last word is 
not a proclamation and demonstrative exhibition 
of that truth of everlasting and essential reality 
and power and life — that truth of Eternal Mind and 
Love — the knowledge of which is, for religion, "eter- 
nal life," and for philosophy the consummation of 
all labor of intelligence. Not this is their last word, 
but — Agnosticism! Assuming to speak not simply 
for themselves, but for all mankind, in the past, the 
present, and the future, they pronounce the verdict, 
Ignoramus et ignorabimus. The absolute, they say, 
is the unknowable. Now this doctrine has surely 
nothing but the form of knowledge without its sub- 
stance; and this, I repeat, because in the very choice 
and adoption of its peculiar data, presuppositions, 
and method, it abstracts from the substance. It 
finds, naturally, in its conclusions no more than 
its premises contained. This formal knowledge, 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 9 

then, with reference to religion, finds its only posi- 
tive labor in collecting, classifying, and generaliz- 
ing the phenomena of religions. It thus attains, at 
most, only to a so-called science of religions, but not 
to science of religion. It can exhibit great stores 
of information in discussing the former, but is dumb 
with reference to the latter; or, confessing that in " re- 
ligious ideas" there is a " vital element," 3 finds this 
element in man's invincible and enslaving ignorance, 
rather than in his practical and theoretical posses- 
sion, through intelligence, of that truth, which, since 
it makes man spiritually free, can have no other truth 
superior to it, i. e. y is absolute. 

From such abstract, negative wisdom, religion, 
if it be indeed a concrete reality, has nothing to fear. 
Agnosticism, as a cloud formed from the mists of 
dogmatic ignorance, may temporarily — and perhaps 
will always, in scattered, shifting places — cast a 
chilling and confusing shadow. But like all that is 
purely negative, it will be chased away by the sun- 
light of positive, experimental reality. The con- 
crete always thus triumphs over, persists in spite of, 
and refutes, the abstract. So it was, in the case of 
the issue between the Christian Church and English 
Deism. The implicit and in itself thoroughly justifi- 
able, though ill-defined, aim of the latter was to com- 
pass a philosophy of religion. But the theoretic or 
philosophic bases, on which it went to work, were ex- 
tremely abstract, dogmatic, narrow, being mainly de- 
rived from Locke, and being in kind the same on 
which, too, nowadays the substanceless, spectral 



10 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

structure of Agnosticism is reared. It was no won- 
der, therefore, that Deism ended, not in real compre- 
hension of religion, but in conceptions, the adoption 
of which cuts the nerve of all religion, — the con- 
ceptions, namely, of God either as a purely tran- 
scendent and mechanical First Cause, or else (as in 
the case of Hume) of God as a being whose existence 
is wholly indemonstrable. Against such negative 
results as these the Church triumphed — not so much 
because the theoretic or quasi-philosophic principles 
which its defenders at that time nominally accepted 
as a basis of argument were superior to those of their 
adversaries; on the contrary, many of the leading 
Apologists swore by the same philosophic (t. e. f 
Lockeian) tenets as the Deists; — it triumphed be- 
cause there was in it something living and con- 
crete, an element of vital, self-evidencing and self- 
propagating reality. 

I may add that, even if religion were pure illusion, 
it would not necessarily have anything to fear from 
the philosophy of Agnosticism. An illusion has, at 
all events, this dignity, viz., that it is a phenomenon; 
and an illusion which, like religion, is as widespread 
as the human race, can scarcely dread detection 
from a philosophy which professes to know nothing 
but phenomena, and which, therefore, making this 
profession, has no right to single out a particular 
phenomenon and assert, or attempt to prove, that 
it is unfounded in — has no true correspondence with, 
or relation to — absolute reality. 4 

With reference, then, to any attack upon religion 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 11 

which may come, or appear to come, from Agnostic 
quarters, religion may consider herself essentially 
safe. She may do this, because history has demon- 
strated that she is, with reference to such attack, 
invulnerable, and also because, in the matter of re- 
sistance to it, the cause of religion is, from the very 
nature of the case, identical with the cause of phi- 
losophy; and philosophy is, among other things, and 
first of all, the demonstrative, experimental refuta- 
tion of Agnosticism. 

For philosophy, let me remind you, has an historic 
and indeed, like religion, a perennial existence. It 
exists as demonstrative and in the highest and most 
pre-eminent degree experimental science. Indeed, 
philosophy may well be defined, in distinction from 
all other sciences, as the science of experience as 
such. It determines — finds out and declares — what 
is the absolute nature of experience, and what is 
that nature of being, of reality, which is given in 
and is organically one with experience. Twice, in 
the history of occidental thought, has philosophic 
science reached its flood-tide, first in the classic 
philosophy of Greece, with Plato and Aristotle, and 
again in the now classic philosophy of Germany. 
Results were reached in both cases — not disparate 
and opposed, but confirming and complementing each 
other. How should this be otherwise ? — since the 
subject-matter of inquiry, viz., the world of man's 
conscious experience, or what we call the world 
of reality, and the agent of inquiry, viz., human 
intelligence, were in both cases the same. So 



12 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

modern mathematics does not overturn, it only 
supplements and extends, ancient mathematics. 

The results of philosophic inquiry exist, then, and 
are embodied in literary monuments accessible to 
the world. These results, too, have been wrought 
or assimilated into the intellectual life-blood of the 
western world to a remarkable degree and with 
most influential effect. The classic philosophy of 
Greece was the intellectual rudder of a score of 
centuries. With its aid Christianity itself, in the 
persons of its earliest apologists, first took its bear- 
ings in the world of intelligence, found and further 
made itself at home in this world, and so was the 
better able to commend itself successfully to a pa- 
gan world, waiting to receive its light. Nay, more 
than one Christian apostle found in the armory of 
Greek philosophy the words and conceptions best 
adapted to convey, in epistles now universally ac- 
cepted as canonical, " the truth as " — to their di- 
vinely illuminated minds — it was and everlastingly 
"is in Jesus." Nor has the positive substance of 
the classic philosophy of Greece, essentially, been 
displaced to-day — any more than Homer and So- 
phocles and Phidias have been displaced. Men no 
longer write Homeric epics, or Sophoclean dramas, 
nor do they longer seek to honor " the gods " through 
new statues, of Phidian conception and execution. 
Yet the truth of artistic conception, which is handed 
down to us in the immortal works of these artists, 
is a possession, a positive instruction, an inspiration 
for all time. The "relativity," if we may so term 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 13 

it, of ancient art is rather superficial and accidental, 
than essential. The like is true respecting the fun- 
damental philosophical conceptions of the Greek 
masters in philosophy, their conceptions respecting 
intelligence and respecting that nature of Being 
which alone intelligence can, must, and does recog- 
nize. The final result of that modern philosophic 
movement, beginning immediately with Kant, which 
has now become classic, was an essential reaffirma- 
tion of the best Greek conceptions respecting the 
universal, necessary, and eternal nature and content 
of human experience. But it was not mere reaf- 
firmation, not mere verbal repetition. It was a 
new demonstration, the outcome of the labor of the 
modern mind through centuries of struggle. It was 
therefore peculiarly relative to the needs, the diffi- 
culties, and the peculiar lights of the modern world. 
And we must say that it was, correspondingly, more 
complete than the ancient one; and it must further 
be added that the new light of experimental fact — 
and philosophy neither is, nor ever pretends to be, 
anything but the comprehension of such fact — the 
new light of experimental fact, I say, owing to its 
possession of which modern philosophy was able, 
on the one hand, to correct and, on the other, to 
render more complete the demonstration begun in 
Greek philosophy, was, notably and especially, the 
light shed by the fundamental facts of Christianity. 
The object of this parenthesis in my present ar- 
gument is to insist upon the fact that philosophy 
has an historic existence; that this existence is not 



14 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

confined to the past, but continues through its 
results — often most powerful where least observed 
— in the present; and that philosophy has demon- 
strated many things. But I wish no less strenuously 
to insist that philosophy also exists in another fash- 
ion than this purely historic and general one. It 
exists universally — at least in an ideal way, as the 
object of the most deep-seated and radical impulse 
of human intelligence. It is still and always will 
be cultivated, with more or less of industry, energy, 
and success. And I say, as speaking for those who 
now seek intelligently to cultivate it, or may here- 
after do so, that they recognize, and must ever 
recognize — so far as they truly recognize anything 
whatsoever about the matter — that, while philo- 
sophic intelligence does not consist in repeating 
the words of others who have gone before, it is 
fatally and foolishly recreant to its own professed 
purpose, when it ignores the past. The past is not 
to be ignored, but to be known, comprehended, and 
valued at its precise worth. All worth is not in the 
past, but it is just as true that the past is not with- 
out worth. Some things have been demonstrated. 
This is to be recognized. Some things have been 
incorrectly, it may be altogether falsely, conceived 
and demonstrated; (in what science is the reverse 
true ? yet the existence and worth of the science 
are not therefore denied;) and these are to be ex- 
amined anew. The work of philosophy is absolutely 
free, presuppositionless inquiry. But it is equally 
catholic and comprehensive. It is concerned only, 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 15 

like religion, to know the truth. " The love of the 
truth " is, in Platonic phrase, its only inspiration. 
And experimental fact, in the true and complete 
sense of this term, is, I repeat, philosophy's only 
guide. 5 

Returning now, to the point in our argument, 
from which the foregoing digression proceeded, I 
repeat that, as the first and, as it were, negative, 
part of her own peculiar task, philosophy herself 
has overthrown, and stands ever ready to over- 
throw, the slender ground of false theory on which 
Agnosticism rests, and this by the only means ap- 
propriate to such work, namely, the evidence of 
experimental fact. If, therefore, religion may seem 
to have anything to fear from Agnosticism, philoso- 
phy herself will, if need be, aid her in routing this 
enemy. 

But it is a question of far different concern for 
religion to ask, What then, is the verdict that phi- 
losophy pronounces upon religion, when, having 
accomplished the preliminary task of demolishing 
its natural adversary, sensational Agnosticism, it 
proceeds to its positive work of sounding to its 
lowest depths the sea of our conscious experience; 
or, what amounts to the same thing, examining the 
deepest foundations of the world of reality as it 
exists for man ? Does it find there a secure and 
everlasting home for religion, or does the logic of fact 
compel it to pronounce religion a parasitic excres- 
cence upon human life, not to be carefully and ener- 
getically fostered, but to be cut off and consumed in 



16 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the flame of truth ? Is religion in its essence — not 
in its changing garb of story, image, rite, and prac- 
tice — true or false ? Has it an imperishable sub- 
stance of reality, or is its edifice only held up by 
sand-ropes of illusion, prejudice, and ignorance ? 
The essence of religion is contained, for intelligence, 
in certain presuppositions respecting the absolute 
nature and relations of things, with the truth or 
falsehood of which religion, as an object of intelli- 
gence, stands or falls. It presupposes that absolute 
being is Spiritual, and that Divine Spirit is the 
source and king and goal of all dependent being. 
It assumes that the world is not merely a vast, 
fate-directed mechanism, but that it is suffused, up- 
held, nay, everlastingly created by the power and 
wisdom of Divine Spirit. It implies that man is, in 
his true nature and intention, a spirit, and that he 
is able, required, and above all, privileged to enter 
into living relations to the Divine Spirit, — in which 
relations, more especially, religion directly consists 
or has its immediate life. Does philosophy confirm 
or overthrow these presuppositions and implica- 
tions ? Religion shares with natural science the 
larger part of the honor of being the historic mother 
or matrix of philosophy. Is she devoured by her 
own offspring ? And if not, what nature, what 
justification, what reality, does philosophy recog- 
nize in or for religion ? 

These questions, which indicate in broadest out- 
line the general scope of the discussions upon which 
we propose to enter, are not so novel and striking 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 17 

as they would be if there had never been such a 
thing as religious philosophy cultivated among men. 
But they are fundamental, and each new generation 
must meet and answer them anew and indepen- 
dently, as a condition of the maintenance of a 
robust and self-sustaining — not to say self-propa- 
gating and world-saving — religious intelligence. 
No science is preserved and maintained by mere 
tradition. On the contrary each generation and 
each individual student, while accepting the old 
as a datum, must redemonstrate it in order really 
to have masterly possession of it. And most of all 
is this true concerning that science which religion 
presupposes, — the science of God in his relations to 
man and the world, and of man and the world in 
their relations to God. 

I have thus far spoken of the relation of religion 
to intelligence only as a relation into which relig- 
ion may and must perforce be brought, whether she 
will or not. But a higher and deeper truth is that 
religion — and, above all, Christianity — both presup- 
poses and invites the searching and illuminating light 
of true intelligence and finds in it the immediate sub- 
jective source of her best" strength. Religion, ac- 
cording to the Christian ideal, is freedom — absolute 
freedom — not only for feeling and willing, but also 
for thinking, man, through the truth. "The truth 
shall make you," without any qualification added, 
i. e. y absolutely and most truly, "free." Christian- 
ity's promise is "eternal life," through the knowl- 
edge of the Spiritual Father, who as such is declared 



18 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to be "the only true God," and of him whom God 
has sent and who expressly declared of himself 
that, in order to be rightly known, he must disap- 
pear from the physical presence of his disciples and 
reappear to their spiritual and only true sight, in 
his true and everlasting spiritual nature, by revela- 
tion in and through the eternal "Spirit of truth." 
Religion is thus, from the point of view of Christi- 
anity, a partaking of the Holy Ghost, which " guides 
into all truth." Its pastors, so far as they are "af- 
ter" Jehovah's own "heart," "feed his people with 
wisdom and understanding." Religion presupposes, 
and has, for one of its immediate aims, the promotion 
of absolute intelligence — intelligence, that is to say, 
respecting the nature of absolute being, or God, and 
respecting the absolute nature and relations of man, 
and of the finite universe which immediately sur- 
rounds man and first seems to claim him exclusively 
for its own. To its ministers, more than to any 
other class of men, is given the indirect protection, 
and, even, largely the direct promotion of the ab- 
solute or universal intelligence of communities and 
individuals. Hence, as I scarcely need to add, the 
obvious and universally recognized necessity that 
these ministers should be men of the most highly 
trained intelligence and of substantial knowledge. 
In view of this nature of religion it may even be 
said that in religious philosophy it is not so much 
intelligence, or philosophy, that judges religion, as 
religion that, through intelligence, takes cognizance 
of and judges its own self. 



RELIGION AND INTELLIGENCE. 19 

Religion, as presupposing and requiring knowledge 
of the Absolute, and philosophy, as the pure, unbi- 
ased search for and demonstration of it, occupy 
like ground. Each implies (i) a process, way, or 
means of intelligence, by which (2) the Absolute 
Object of intelligence is reached. Our purpose and 
method will require us, accordingly, first succinctly 
to indicate the general nature and results of the 
philosophic theory of knowledge and of the abso- 
lute or final object of knowledge; and then to seek 
to state, in part with greater fulness, the concep- 
tions respecting the same topics, which are presup- 
posed or proclaimed by Christianity; with a view to 
showing that the Christian conceptions are not re- 
pugnant to the conceptions of philosophy, that the 
former are, rather, the fulfilment and enrichment of 
the latter, and, in general, that in positive, substan- 
tial, concrete and historic philosophy — in distinction 
from the negative, abstract, and substanceless em- 
piricism, which is often, though falsely, supposed to 
represent the last result of philosophic inquiry — 
"true religion" finds itself, not disgraced, but justi- 
fied,— and not eviscerated, or reduced, as regards its 
content for intelligence to a spectral caput mortuum, 
but left rich in positive, living, deeply experimental, 
and all-significant substance. 



LECTURE II. 

THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
'Apxrf Si tf vo7]6i$. — Arist. Met. 12, 7, 4. 

r T^HE philosophic theory of knowledge, or the 
-*- theory of philosophic knowledge, is nothing 
but the completed science of knowledge, intel- 
ligence, or experience. Philosophic knowledge is 
nothing but intelligence completely fulfilling in 
kind, if not in degree, its own ideal, or realizing 
its full specific nature and function. In one respect 
such knowledge is something sui generis; in another 
it is not. Intelligence in its fundamental nature is 
an organic process. The complete nature of intel- 
ligence may in all strictness be likened to an organ- 
ism; nay, it is an organism. If a whole organism is, 
with reference to or in comparison with its separate 
members, something sui generis, then this descrip- 
tion applies to philosophic intelligence. And this 
is the case. A whole organism is something more 
than any of its particular members, or than the mere 
mechanical aggregate of all its members. It is, or 
represents, the common life or animating and unit- 
ing principle of all its parts. It is, I say, the com- 
mon life of all its parts, and is not the exclusive 
(20) 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 21 

property of any one part, nor obtained by mere sum- 
mation of the peculiar properties of all the parts 
taken severally. And so it is siri generis. And yet, 
in its fulness and completeness, it is not without any 
of its parts. As it, the unifying and vivifying prin- 
ciple, permeates them all, so it presupposes them 
all, as the condition of its own reality and perfection. 
The life and reality of the.whole are in and through 
the life and reality of its parts or members. The 
whole has thus, in a sense, all its parts both ideally 
and really in common with itself; and, thus consid- 
ered, it is not siri generis. Least of all does the 
living whole contradict its members ! Complete^ 
philosophic, or, as it is often equivocally called, ab- 
solute intelligence, does not contradict or overthrow, 
nor can it dispense with, the minor, particular func- 
tions of intelligence and their achievements. If 
historic information and mathematico-physical sci- 
ence, for example, represent the fruits of special 
functions or directions of intelligence, philosophy, as, 
in Platonic phrase, objectively the " science of wholes," 
or subjectively the result of the functioning of complete 
or ''absolute" intelligence, neither overturns, nor 
can afford to affect indifference to, the methods and 
results of such special sciences. To suppose the con- 
trary is simply absurd. 

Philosophic intelligence, or philosophy, is there- 
fore not separated from all other intelligence, or 
science, as the purely a priori from the purely a pos- 
teriori (as these terms are often, and, indeed, too 
generally used). It does not differ from the latter 



22 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

as the inexperimental, magical, miraculous, differs 
from the experimental, simple, and immediately ob- 
vious. No such chasm separates it from all other 
works of intelligence. If it were thus separated, it 
would contradict its own nature. The inexperimen- 
tal and inexplicable is no subject, object, or field 
of intelligence, but only, at most, of unintelligent 
superstition. Intelligence is nothing but the full, 
self-manifesting and self-recognizing light of expe- 
rience. In " absolute intelligence," or philosophy, 
experience simply takes, or seeks to take, complete 
account of herself — not to contradict or to look away 
from any part of herself. 

To have experience, to know — not to have or do 
which were for man the same thing as not to be — 
wherein does this consist ? 

It is obvious, to begin with, that intelligence, or 
knowledge, is, so to speak, bi-polar, or implies of 
necessity a double reference (i) to a subject or agent 
that knows, and (2) to an object, which is known. 
These two, subject and object, are so closely corre- 
lated, are bound to each other in such inseparable 
organic unity, that neither can be regarded exclu- 
sively by itself, except through a process of ab- 
straction, which like all abstraction, mutilates the 
living whole and changes the very nature of that 
which is abstracted. The question, which lies im- 
mediately before us, obviously requires us to consider 
the process or nature of intelligence more especially 
on its subjective side. What — we wish to know — is 
the true and complete description of intelligence 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 23 

as a process whose seat is in a knowing agent? The 
form of the question makes apparent abstraction from 
the objective side of intelligence. We must there- 
fore see to it that our abstraction is only relative 
and is not carried so far as to pervert the essential 
nature of the subject of our inquiry. The more ex- 
press and explicit examination of intelligence on its 
objective side will follow in the next lecture. 

In answer, then, to our present inquiry, we remark, 
first, that that science of intelligence, that knowl- 
edge respecting the fundamental nature and process 
of knowledge itself, which we seek, is not contained 
or furnished in Formal Logic. Formal Logic only 
teaches us how to handle given data of intelligence 
or knowledge, so that, under manipulation, or em- 
ployed as terms in a process called reasoning, they 
may suffer no detriment, or may reappear in a so- 
called "conclusion" with nature and value un- 
changed. Or else, given a conclusion, formal logic 
teaches us the art of finding admitted data — " prem- 
ises" — that will, as it is said, substantiate or " prove" 
it, i. e., in reality, be identical with it, only in another 
and more familiar form. The fundamental principle 
of such logic is thus the so-called Principle of Iden- 
tity, whose formula is A=A; together with the 
obverse of this principle, the Principle of Contra- 
diction (A is not non-A), and the Principle of 
Excluded Middle (A must be either B or non-B; a 
third alternative is impossible). These principles 
logic presupposes as axiomatic, self-evident. It 
does not demonstrate or deduce them. It adopts 



24 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

them as immediately or intuitively given, and sim- 
ply teaches how, in correct thinking, they are to be 
applied to data which, themselves also, are assumed 
as already supplied. Since formal logic does not 
inquire after the ultimate warrant of its principles, 
as contained in the nature and process of intelli- 
gence itself, and since it raises no question as to 
what it means for something to be a datum of intel- 
ligence, or as to what are the conditions, contained 
in the nature and process of intelligence, upon the 
fulfilment of which alone anything can become a 
datum for intelligence, this science can in no proper 
sense be styled the science of intelligence or of 
knowledge per se. It is only a partial, analytical 
science of the mode of intelligence, and not of its 
nature or essence. 

Still less, secondly, is the science, which we seek, 
to be looked for in what has been known as Empiri- 
cal Psychology. Here it is that a long and con- 
spicuous list of British inquirers, represented by such 
names as Locke, Hume, the two Mills, Spencer, and 
others have more or less blindly sought for it, but 
with final results, over which as an inscription the 
one word " Vanity" can alone be appropriately 
written. The true motive for the existence of the 
Scotch Common Sense, or Intuitional School, as 
represented by Reid and Hamilton, lay precisely in 
the sense, which these men and their supporters 
had, of the essential vanity, the pure negativism, of 
that sensational empiricism, which their rivals had 
ostensibly deduced from empirical psychology. The 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 25 

result of all this alleged examination and explana- 
tion of intelligence, on the part of the empirical 
school, was not philosophic science, but nescience, — 
not the illumination of intelligence, but only the en- 
veloping of it in new and thicker clouds of apparently 
baffling mystery. The conclusions reached were in 
flagrant contradiction of the universal practical post- 
ulates of intelligence, and the merit of the Scotch 
School consisted in the energy with which it reaf- 
firmed some of the more obvious of these postulates 
under the guise of " necessary beliefs," "native no- 
tions," or " intuitions." To comprehension of these 
postulates the leaders of the Scotch School them- 
selves did not indeed come. As to the origin or 
absolute justification of the " beliefs" in question, 
the How, the Whence, the Why of them, its mem- 
bers had scarcely one reasonable word to offer. 
Reid's " explanation " of them was the precise op- 
posite of explanation. It consisted in ascribing 
them to the "magic" of our " constitution." They 
were he said, "as it were, conjured up by nature;" 
how, or with what absolute sense or justification, 
one could not tell. And with Hamilton the case 
stands substantially not at all better. It is true 
that he, rather feebly echoing the phraseology of 
Kant, talks of " the spontaneity of reason," as ac- 
counting for primary beliefs. And in the same tone 
it happened to Reid to speak of the province of 
" common sense " — otherwise conceived as the fac- 
ulty of necessary beliefs — as identical with that of 
" reason," viz., " to judge of things self-evident." 



26 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

But this only amounted, in Reid's case, to giving to 
beliefs that were confessedly unaccountable, though 
necessary, the euphemistic description of "things 
self-evident," and making " reason " identical with 
a faculty of "magic." Reason, the fundamental 
faculty and the very root of all intelligence and 
all experience, was in effect made to be a faculty 
of the unintelligible, inexplicable, and inexperi- 
mental ! And so with Hamilton. The fact is, that 
the method of the Scotch School was essentially 
identical with that of their ostensible adversaries. 
Their whole wisdom was, after all, in kind nothing 
but the wisdom of descriptive empirical psychology. 
It consisted in pointing out the immediate content of 
intelligence or experience, but not in demonstrat- 
ing the science of intelligence or experience as such 
or as a living process, and still less of the absolute 
object of intelligence. It may be added, for the 
sake of completeness, that the only work which, 
under the circumstances, the Scotch School could be 
expected by its polemics to accomplish, it seems 
effectually to have accomplished. The later sen- 
sational empiricists, e. g., J. S. Mill and H. Spencer, 
admit as necessary, though indeed quite inexplic- 
able and scientifically unjustifiable, certain of the 
beliefs, which it was the merit and the peculiarity 
of the Scotch School to insist upon, such, for exam- 
ple, as the belief in self. 1 This marks a substantial 
advance upon the position of Hume, who represents 
in completest and most consistent form the purely 
negative results of epistemological inquiry pro- 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. "11 

ceeding from the postulates and by the method of 
a narrowly sensational psychology. Hume, too, rec- 
ognized the beliefs in question, but not as inherently 
necessary, nor as inexplicable. He found an osten- 
sible explanation for them, an explanation by which 
they were in substance explained away. All belief, 
namely, was for Hume but a peculiar phenomenon 
of consciousness. It was a case of unusual strength 
and vividness in our ideas, due to customary, but 
inherently contingent, association ; and it was 
nothing else. It signified or proved nothing be- 
yond itself as a contingent mental phenomenon. 2 

In brief, then, empirical psychology is incompetent 
to furnish us the science of which we are in quest, 
because its work is wholly restricted to the analytic 
recognition of conscious phenomena — of thoughts, 
feelings, ideas, fancies, wishes, and the like — which 
we are said involuntarily to "have" or which, in the 
peculiar language of psychology, are simply given 
for, or presented to, intelligence. Its work, I say, 
is wholly restricted to the recognition of these phe- 
nomena as they are given, or as they immediately 
appear, and of the rules of co-existence and se- 
quence which obtain among them. It has to do, 
then, with finished prodiccts or furnished materials 
of intelligence, and not with that organic process of 
intelligence or experience, without which the prod- 
ucts would never exist and the materials would be 
given in vain. 3 It deals only with pure effects, and 
it is no wonder that it then sees in the effects at 
most only the evidence of some cause, or causal 



28 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

process, but not what that cause or process is. 
The same is fully true even with reference to that 
latest form of empirical psychology called physio- 
logical psychology. Here, the steps of a mechan- 
ical process are traced, in the phenomena of the 
nervous system, which run parallel with and im- 
mediately condition certain other phenomena called 
states of consciousness, feelings, or sensations. But 
this process is not itself the process of intelligence. 
For intelligence it is only relatively a process; ab- 
solutely considered, it is for intelligence a product, 
an effect, a final result or object of intelligence. 
So true is this, that Mr. Spencer, as English spokes- 
man of those who seek in psychology the science 
of intelligence, says expressly that his belief that 
he possesses a nervous system, is inferential; it is 
a " conclusion " of intelligence. That is to say, in 
the language just above employed, it is a product 
of intelligence. How shall then the process, which 
is believed to be observed in the object of this in- 
ferential belief (the nervous system), be that process 
of intelligence whereby the belief itself is created ? 
Mr. Spencer goes on further to assert that there is 
no "perceptible or conceivable community of na- 
ture " between the facts of physiology and those of 
psychology. Self-evidently true as this assertion 
is, from Mr. Spencer's point of view, it is, if taken 
without any qualification whatsoever, thoroughly 
arbitrary and dogmatic. From the spiritualistic 
point of view of philosophy, the two classes of facts 
in question, in spite of their absolute specific differ- 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 29 

ence, are demonstrably one through their inclusion 
in, or functional dependence on, a genus of reality 
that at once transcends and is immanent in them 
both. 4 Reserving, therefore, our right to protest 
against the unqualified form and tone of Mr. Spen- 
cer's assertion, it is enough for us now to note that 
so far as the denial of any community of nature 
between physical and psychical facts is justified in 
fact, just so far is the inference strengthened that 
the physical process is not identical with the process 
of intelligence. Analytico-descriptive, introspec- 
tive, empirical psychology is a science, and phys- 
iological psychology is a science — each of them 
devoted to the legitimate work of exploring a por- 
tion of the field of phenomena which are at once 
given for and also dependent for their existence on 
intelligence. But neither of them is the science 
of science or of intelligence. Neither of them can 
ask after that nature of intelligence, which is itself 
the condition of the existence and of the observa- 
bleness of the field of phenomena in the exploration 
of which each is engaged. 

Such are among the reasons why we cannot apply 
with hope of success to the formal logician or to the 
empirical psychologist for information respecting the 
science of intelligence, knowledge, or experience, as 
such. Where, then, does this science exist, if in- 
deed it have existence ? It exists in philosophy, 
which is quite another thing than either formal 
logic or psychology. It exists, historically, in phi- 



30 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

losophy, so far as philosophy itself has a well- 
founded historic existence. For philosophy exists 
only by grace of and through the science of knowl- 
edge. Nay, no denial of the possibility of positive 
results for philosophy, no philosophical scepticism, 
and no materialistic and anti-philosophical dogma- 
tism, ever existed or can exist, except on the express 
or implied ground of results flowing from some al- 
leged science of knowledge. We are accustomed, 
correctly, to think and speak of philosophy as the 
science of being as such, the science of absolute 
reality, or of the absolute nature of things, etc. 
But what is reality or being but object or subject of 
knowledge? It belongs to ''reality," in the defini- 
tion of philosophy, to be known, just as necessarily 
as it belongs to water (for example) to be wet. 
Just as there can be no science of any but wet 
water, so there can be no science of any but known 
or knowable reality. No greater absurdity or in- 
justice was ever committed than through the attri- 
bution to the great philosophers of a disposition, 
wish, tendency, or even, in any just sense, the 
attempt to demonstrate anything about a sphere 
of reality which transcends intelligence. This in- 
justice is nevertheless not uncommonly committed, 
and the view which leads to it has had its most 
influential modern supporter in Immanuel Kant, 
whose argument, nevertheless, rests only on the 
essentially dogmatic basis of an incomplete theory 
of knowledge, in which "sensible affection" is un- 
critically, and in the face of the tendency of Kant's 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 31 

own discoveries and demonstrations, held to be the 
only touchstone of reality. Whenever, and so far 
as, intelligence absurdly identifies itself with its 
instrument, viz., sensation, its conception of reality 
is sensible, and only sensible; and then the lurking 
and indestructible feeling that the sensible is not 
the all of reality finds expression and seeks to 
justify itself in the doctrine of a realm which is 
held to transcend intelligence, because it transcends 
sense — a realm of unknowable u things-in-them- 
selves." 5 This sense-begotten and altogether dog- 
matic prejudice is the whole explanation of the 
charge, so current in modern times, that philosophy 
in its search for the absolute reality, seeks or pre- 
tends to go beyond and demonstrate something 
independent of experience. But whenever intelli- 
gence comes to know itself in its instrument (sen- 
sation), and hence also in its distinction from and 
superiority to the same, its conception of reality is 
corrected accordingly, and becomes that which is set 
forth in the great philosophies — the philosophies of 
Aristotle, Leibnitz, Hegel, etc., — and which, as we 
shall see, Christianity at once presupposes and pro- 
claims. I repeat then, that intelligence and reality, 
like father and son, or like subject and object in con- 
sciousness, are strict correlates. There is no science 
of the one, without science of the other. In this 
sense Parmenides spoke truly, " Thought and Being 
are one." The science of being per se is but the 
demonstrative interpretation of intelligence, or ex- 
perience, per se. Wherever, therefore, philosophy 



32 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

has a positive existence, there you may look for 
more or less complete developments of the science 
of knowledge. I need scarcely add that in modern 
philosophy these are found in greater extent than 
in ancient philosophy. The difference, however, is 
only one of completeness and extent, but not of 
kind. 

What, then, has the philosophic science of knowl- 
edge to tell us? 

First, it is obvious that intelligence is comparable 
to a light. Such comparison is very commonly 
made. The expressions, " light of intelligence, of 
knowledge, of consciousness, of experience," have 
passed into common speech. The same metaphor, 
which they express, is implied in the employment, for 
the purpose of expressing purely intellectual functions, 
and relations, of such words as to see and perceive. 
For instance, one will or may say, on the ground 
of a purely rational persuasion, " I see that perfect 
virtue is perfect humanity." "Was man weiss siehi 
man erst" says Goethe, carrying the metaphor to the 
apparent verge of paradox, and yet remaining strictly 
within the realm of experimental truth. Physical 
light, we may say, is but a part of, and is conditioned 
by mental light. What, in the view of physics, 
exists "objectively" in the case of light is only 
molecular motions. These are not seen, nor do they 
of themselves constitute light: the latter in its pecul- 
iar nature exists for us only in and through our 
conscious sensations of sight. The light of intelli- 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 33 

gence is the light of our own existence and, for us, 
of all other existence. 

But the notion of light is that of a purely simple 
quality — a somewhat that is diffusive and all-com- 
prehensive, but contains in itself no element of 
difference. Pure light, while it renders all objects 
visible, is, taken by itself alone, invisible. Light can- 
not be perceived without the presence of illuminated 
objects. So it is with the light of conscious intelli- 
gence, which is — or would be — a perfect blank, with- 
out objects of intelligence. Physical light must have, 
we may say, — repeating our previous statement in 
another form, — a content, in order to be known. The 
same is true of conscious intelligence. Suppose, 
now, one were to attempt to explain light by an 
analytical examination of that which I have termed 
the "content" of light (viz., the sum total, the uni- 
verse, of illuminated objects or of things visible), 
and were finally to declare that the universal law of 
this content — say, the physical law of gravitation or 
of evolution — was a law to explain the whole or 
specific nature of light. Should we not call this ar- 
rant nonsense? Yet such procedure would be quite 
of a piece With the method of the empirical psychol- 
ogist, so far as he supposes, that by analyzing the 
conte7it of conscious intelligence, and ascertaining 
the laws of co-existence and sequence which obtain 
therein — laws of association, for example — he has 
found the key of explanation for the nature of intel- 
ligence itself. No. Just as physical light, as a thing 
sui generis > has an objective explanation that is pe- 



34 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

culiar to itself, so is it with intelligence and its light. 
Physical light is objectively and physically explained 
as a peculiar mode of motion. Subjectively, or con- 
sciously, it is a mental phenomenon not to be con- 
founded with any other. Further, it is not known 
without visible objects, but is not to be identified 
with any or all of them. Analogously, the light of 
intelligence is objectively explained as a complex 
process, whose law and factors are subsequently to 
be named. Subjectively, it is a thing, which we 
must for the present, at least, term unique and inde- 
finable, and yet is immediately known as the life of 
all knowing. It is not known without intelligible 
or conscious objects, but is not to be identified with 
any or all of them. 

Intelligence, I said, is a process. As such, it is 
an activity, and that, too, not a quasi-activity, or 
phenomenon of activity, such as is pure motion in 
time and space, but a genuine and substantial one, 
such as Aristotle terms an energy. In short, it is an 
organic and spontaneous, self-realizing and self-ful- 
filling activity. Of these, points, now, in their order. 

And first I mention that the facts which demon- 
strate that intelligence is such an activity as has 
been described, are overlooked by the empirical phi- 
losopher, who admits no results or methods but those 
of mechanico-physical science and empirical psychol- 
ogy. He, the rather, forsakes fact and betakes him- 
self to metaphor — to a metaphor, by which it is made 
the nature of intelligence, or ''mind," to have no 
nature, but to be, in Locke's phrase, only "like a 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 35 

piece of white paper, upon which nothing has ever 
been written." Objects, then, whose right and power 
to exist independently of all intelligence it never 
occurs to the empiricist to question, are supposed — 
still in the language of metaphor — to produce "im- 
pressions " or to imprint legible " characters " on the 
passive paper-like mind, and the result is — knowledge ! 
Here knowledge is taken in the abstract or abbrevi- 
ated sense of mere information, a so-called intellect- 
ual possession, acquired, not by an active industry 
of intelligence, — for intelligence is regarded as orig- 
inally nothing positive, " having no nature," no real 
being, and consequently no power to do anything, — 
but by gift from a " world " of unintelligent and, 
strictly speaking, unintelligible objects, in which 
alone true reality, unqualified being, is held to reside, 
and which mechanically strike upon the mind and 
so produce their "impressions." Knowledge, iiitel* 
ligence, mind, is thus nothing real per se; it does 
not by its intrinsic nature share in essential reality; 
it is only the simulacrum, the fancied transcript, or 
insubstantial image of reality. It is the manifesta- 
tion, the appearance, the phenomenon of reality. 

This is the traditional basis of the theory of knowl- 
edge which is styled *' sensational," since it derives its 
whole strength from an analysis of one o,f the charac- 
teristic aspects of sensible knowledge. This theory, 
which ends by essentially abolishing the distinction 
of subject and object in knowledge, (i. e. y by render- 
ing subject and object unknowable and hence indis- 
tinguishable), begins by assuming the distinction in 



36 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

name, but interpreting and applying it as purely 
mechanical in fact. A mechanical relation is one 
that holds, and is possible, only within space and 
time. Objects in mechanical relation are separated 
in space or time, or both. They are wholly distinct 
from each other. They are inherently, or as to their 
natures, unrelated, or have nothing in common. At 
least, it is not essential to mechanical relation that 
such community of nature should exist. Such ob- 
jects merely co-exist or follow each other. They 
constitute only a loose aggregate, not an organic 
whole. If held together, this is by a power external 
and superior to themselves, that is to say, by a power 
whose relation to them is (again) conceived as only 
mechanical. Thus simply co-existing or following 
each other, the nearest relationship into which they 
can enter with reference to each other is that of ex- 
ternal contact, as the result of local motion So, in 
the sensational theory of knowledge, object is origi- 
nally conceived as moving up into contact with sub- 
ject and leaving its mark upon it, which mark then 
remains as the all of knowledge, taking the impos- 
sible place of subject and object at one and the same 
time. 6 In other words, the originally supposed sub- 
ject and object disappear in — or remain outside of — 
the final product, and as the analysis of this prod- 
uct is supposed to constitute or discover the whole 
of our actual knowledge, it remains impossible to 
furnish a rational explanation of the ground upon 
which the original supposition was made. The log- 
ical result is Hume's scepticism — or abstinence from 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 37 

all opinion — respecting the real existence of object 
and subject ("external world" and "mind"). Less 
consistent is the modern doctrine of Agnosticism, 
which persistently holds to the reality of subject and 
object, though acknowledging and loudly proclaim- 
ing their complete ultimate unknowableness. 

There is indeed a mechanical aspect of knowledge — 
more especially of sensible knowledge — but this aspect 
is superficial or, at best, only conditional, not essen- 
tially constitutive. The best proof of this is found in 
the fact that the attempt to found a science of knowl- 
edge on the supposition that the fundamental and 
exclusive relation of subject and object is mechanical 
ends not in science of subject and object, but in nes- 
cience with regard to them; not in explaining intel- 
ligence to itself, but in rendering the very possibility 
of intelligence inexplicable. 

The deficiencies of the sensational theory of knowl- 
edge, and the true relation of mechanical sense to or- 
ganic intelligence, were well understood and power- 
fully set forth in ancient times by Plato and Aristotle 
and in modern times, before Kant, by Leibnitz — but 
in each case, from a peculiar point of view, or with 
reference to the peculiar form in which the problem 
of sensible knowledge was presented to the philoso- 
phers by the sensationalists among their contempo- 
raries. The views of Leibnitz, in particular, were 
developed 7 with special reference to the modifica- 
tion of sensational theory set forth in Locke's Essay. 
But after Locke came Hume, who reduced to final 
and most consistent expression, that which with 



38 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Locke existed rather in the form of germinant ideas 
or first rude beginnings. And the deficiency of the 
sensational theory, as delivered to the world by Hume, 
was first clearly perceived and declared by Kant. It 
was this that awoke Kant from his " dogmatic slum- 
bers," and led him to begin — only to begin, not to 
complete — a new demonstration of the true whole 
science of knowledge, which is of peculiar interest 
and importance for us, not only because we live in 
an intellectual age that still rings with the echo of 
Kant's achievement, but also, in particular, because 
Kant pointed out in the sensational theory its fatal 
failure to recognize the element of mental or intelli- 
gent activity ', and showed how, and in what sense, 
this element, in order to the erection of a truly ex- 
perimental science of knowledge, (and more imme- 
diately of sensible' knowledge itself,) is to be, and 
must be, restored. 

The state of the case, as presented (in part, ex- 
plicitly, and in part, as will be noted, only impli- 
citly) by Hume, is briefly this. All knowledge is 
held to be either immediately or derivatively sensa- 
tional. Sensation is mechanical impression. Im- 
pressions have no breadth — they are not complex. 
They are atomically simple. These statements do 
not correspond to the first appearances. " Impres- 
sions " seem to be complex, to have definite extent 
and character. But analysis, the only instrument 
of method which pure sensationalism admits, must 
resolve all complexity into mere insubstantial ap- 
pearance — just as, in the hands of the physical phi- 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 39 

losopher, it resolves all appearance of complex mate- 
rial existence into the (supposed) essential simplicity 
of independent atoms, standing - in purely mechanical 
relations to each other. So, for Hume, the real 
truth about our sensible consciousness is, that it is 
made up of a series of independent and (in the last 
resort) atomically simple sensations, impressions, or 
" perceptions," which follow each other with an in- 
conceivable rapidity, but between which no real or 
necessary connection — i. e. y no other relation, es- 
sentially, than the purely superficial and accidental 
mechanical relation of matter-of-fact contiguity or 
remoteness in time and space — is perceivable. In 
truth, the premises of the theory do not even admit 
the admission that even such mechanical relation is 
perceivable. Strictly interpreted, they would re- 
strict consciousness, and by consequence knowledge 
and intelligence, to the immediate instantaneous 
present, to the entire exclusion of the past and the fu- 
ture, and a man's "knowledge" at any instant would 
consist only in the simple impression which hap- 
pened to constitute his "mind" at any instant; — i. e.y 
his knowledge, for well-known psychological reasons, 
would be no knowledge. Hume's theory, as Kant 
perceives, ends logically in this way, and Kant's way 
of expressing its deficiency consists in saying that it 
excludes the idea, the possibility, and, above all, con- 
tradicts the fact, of combination or synthesis among 
the elements of our (sensible) knowledge. For, as 
matter of fact, such combination or synthesis exists, 
and that not in purely casual, accidental forms, but 



40 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

in forms of rule or law, which are necessary and 
universal. 8 

The casual, or "habitual," synthesis Hume ad- 
mitted, positing, to account for it, the faculty of 
memory and certain principles of association. The 
necessary and universal he denied. Kant takes issue 
with Hume on this point, declaring that the neces- 
sary and universal — necessary and universal truths — 
having the form of necessary and universal synthe- 
ses of elements of knowledge, are, as matter of fact 
contained in those sciences (pure mathematics and 
pure physical science,) which have to do, the one 
with the formal, the other with the material, side of 
sensible knowledge. The fact is established. The 
only question is, What nature of intelligence, or of 
the process of knowledge, does the fact at once im- 
ply and reveal ? The fact, I said, of the existence of 
the necessary and universal syntheses in knowledge 
is established. But even if it were not, yet Hume 
himself admits the existence of fortuitous and even 
habitual syntheses and this in opposition to the 
strict requirements of the purely analytic method of 
the theory of knowledge founded on the presupposi- 
tions of sensational psychology. 9 That which needs 
to be explained, but for which the purely mechanico- 
sensible theory of knowledge has no sufficient ex- 
planation, is the existence of any synthesis what- 
soever, whether fortuitous or necessary, and hence 
of any actual sensible knowledge whatsoever; for 
there is no such knowledge, whether in the form of 
perception or of conception, which does not involve 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 41 

and exist in the form of a synthesis or combination 
of those elementary materials of knowledge, for 
which alone analytic sensationalism has an eye. 
And so Kant's answer to the above-mentioned 
question consists in showing that, and how, all syn- 
thesis in sensible knowledge involves the immediate, 
characteristic and exclusive work — the active work 
— of organic and organizing mind. All synthesis is 
the immediate and continued work of a synthetic, 
i. e., combining, activity, which, if the materials of 
knowledge, that it unites or combines, are conceived 
as provided by the mechanical operation of foreign 
objects upon the subject, 10 must, on its own part, be 
recognized as having its seat exclusively in the 
subject. 

But, now, it is synthesis alone which makes knowl- 
edge to be knowledge; or, at all events, without 
synthesis knowledge is not. And as synthesis is 
primarily an activity — the synthesizing or combin- 
ing act of intelligence conditions the resulting, ob- 
servable fact or state of synthesis in the finished 
product or content of intelligence — so is it with 
knowledge. Knowledge, intelligence, consciousness, 
these words are primarily to be considered as active, 
transitive substantives. They denote something 
which does not consist in the mere passive "receiving" 
or " having" of informing "impressions" or of "con- 
tents." In this purely mechanical way the white 
paper " has " the characters imprinted upon it, and 
the tea-kettle "has" its liquid "contents"; but 
neither paper nor kettle is any wiser or more intel- 



42 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ligent on this account. No, knowledge is strictly 
in the first instance, or fundamentally considered, 
an ideal or mental activity, the most characteristic 
and universal form of which, as far as we now see, is 
synthesis, — combining, unifying, joining the manifold 
in one. 

But in what way is this synthesis effected, or what 
is its relation to the elements combined ? Is this re- 
lation wholly mechanical, and hence indifferent ? 
For instance, a bushel basket may be termed a 
form of synthesis with reference to the potatoes 
which fill the basket. It combines or holds them 
together, but only mechanically. It belongs in no 
sense necessarily to the nature of potatoes, that they 
be put into a basket, nor to the nature of the basket 
that it should contain, or be a means of mechanical 
synthesis for, potatoes. The relation of basket and 
potatoes is fortuitous and mechanical. 

The most universal forms of synthesis in sensible 
knowledge are — to follow, a little longer, in the 
track of Kant — space and time, and the categories 
of quantity, quality, relation (notably, the relation 
of substance and accident, and of cause and effect, 
or law of order), and modality. Are space and 
time, now, ideal baskets, as it were, into which, for 
lack of any other receptacle prepared to receive 
them, intelligence arbitrarily puts foreign " ob- 
jects," which are in themselves indifferent to space 
and time ? Are the objects of sensible conscious- 
ness as indifferent to space and time, as the potatoes 
to the basket ? And in employing the categories, 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 43 

those master-forms of intellectual conception (an- 
other name for synthesis), under which alone — to 
speak with Kant — the material of knowledge fur- 
nished through sensible impressions can acquire for 
us objective form and character, — in employing, I 
say, these categories for the purpose of effectuating 
more definite synthetic union among the percep- 
tional elements of knowledge, are we forcing the 
latter, as it were, into a strait-jacket, to which, 
they, through their very nature, stand, if not in 
an attitude of positive rebellion, yet of complete 
indifference ? 

To these questions, the science of knowledge, 
considered as the simple, honest, and complete 
demonstration of that which lies within the range 
of and constitutes experience, and prosecuted with- 
out regard to gratuitously imagined and absolutely 
supposititious conditions of knowledge and of exist- 
ence which are alleged to transcend experience, 11 
gives and can give but one answer. The relation 
of so-called subjective, mind-generated, synthetic 
form, to so-called objective, sense-generated, dis- 
crete matter of sensible consciousness, is not merely 
mechanical. Only in a superficial sense can it be 
thus styled. In essence it is organic. It is, in kind, 
not a dead, but a living relation. 12 Space and time 
are not merely receivers or containers of physical 
objects, such that the former and the latter might 
and would still remain all the same — and wholly 
unchanged, even though separated from each other. 
Nor are the categories merely a dress, which, sensi- 



44 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ble objects may — but need not necessarily — put on, 
and which serves, like all dress, rather to conceal 
than to reveal the immediate, true, and character- 
istic nature of its wearers. Time and space without 
sensible objects, and sensible objects without time 
and space, are purely mechanical, forced, and unreal 
abstractions. The like must be said respecting the 
categories, as forms, when considered apart from 
their content, and of their content — the so-called 
- raw material " supplied in sensuous consciousness 
— when viewed in separation from the categories. 
If the object were in purely mechanical relation to 
the subject and hence to be conceived as essentially 
separate or absolutely and only different from, and 
opposed to the latter, then the reverse of what has 
just been said would be true. But then, too, it 
would also be true that the " subject form " or 
container would never attain to, be placed upon, 
or receive the "object matter" or content of knowl- 
edge. Thus it is that, maintaining the foregoing 
supposition, the theoretical sensationalist (as Locke, 
Hume, et al. y ) and the critical idealist (Kant), who 
start with the express or implicit assumption of the 
mechanical relation as the fundamental one between 
subject and object, come quickly to the conclusion 
that the true object is an unknown and unknowable 
substrate or thing-in-itself, which the subject-forms 
of intelligence never reach. This conclusion is a 
reductio ad absurdum of the premise on which it 
rests. The science of knowledge has nothing to 
do with unknowable objects. It has no ground on 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 45 

which to posit their existence. It has positive 
ground for absolutely denying their existence, for 
knowing that they do not exist, since the very 
conception of them is a pseudo-conception, i. e n a 
false and impossible one, like that of a square circle 
or a piece of wooden iron. 13 The science of knowl- 
edge is the science of experience, and not of that 
which contradicts the very nature of experience; 
of reason, and not of unreason; of intelligence and 
consciousness, and not of that — viz., abstractions, 
creatures of a self-deceiving imagination — which 
gives the lie to intelligence and makes of con- 
sciousness a nightmare. The object of sensible con- 
sciousness is within and not without consciousness; 
and be it that there are good reasons for terming 
this object — i. e., the object in its characteristically 
sensible aspect — phenomenal, yet the noumenon, the 
absolute reality, which, as men say, " corresponds " 
to it, is not concealed by it. The phenomenal ob- 
ject is not a vail or screen effectually to shut out 
from us the sight of the noumenal object. Nor is 
the former separated from the latter by an im- 
passable interval. On the contrary, to thought it 
instrumentally reveals the true object — as we shall 
have occasion more expressly to see in a subsequent 
lecture. At present it suffices for us to note that 
in the phenomenal object, which alone sensational- 
ism and critical idealism permit us to know, we 
have not an object standing in merely mechanical 
relation to the forms of our knowledge. Its fun- 
damental relation to them is, the rather, wholly 



46 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

organic. To begin with, the so-called material of 
sensible knowledge — the " matter of sensation" — 
enters, in knowledge, into an active, synthetic, or- 
ganizing process of knowledge, just as the raw 
materials, upon which the plant subsists, are taken 
up by the organic forces of the plant into the pro- 
cess of its own life. And then the "forms" of 
knowledge themselves — time, space, and the cate- 
gories — are as the members — hand, foot, etc., or 
root, branches, and the like — of a living organism. 
All of them are easily demonstrated to have no 
absolute independence of each other, just as root 
and branch can have no such independence. Though 
different, they yet have something in common. That 
which is the source of their common life, activity, and 
nature, is reflected in each of them, but adequately 
represented in concreto by none of them. What this 
source is, we must presently inquire. 

But first let us gather up the results of what has 
thus far been said. 

I. Within the realm of experience or of real knowl- 
edge, or more especially of sensible experience — for 
it is this alone that we have thus far been consider- 
ing — the forms of the subject are the forms of the 
object, and vice versa. What is of the subject, is 
not, for that reason, not of the object, and vice versa. 
On the contrary, the subjective is eo ipso, and mutatis 
mutandis, objective, and the objective in like manner 
subjective. In this consists their organic unity. And 
so, in the realm of sensible knowledge, knowledge 
consists just as much in finding the subjective re- 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 47 

fleeted in the objective as, vice versa, in finding the 
object reflected or imaged in the subject. 

2. Knowledge consists in a unifying process. For 
it is synthesis, and synthesis is nothing but the com- 
bination of the manifold in one. Knowledge, then, 
is the reduction of multiplicity to unity, and of the 
manifold particular to the single universal. Or, just 
as truly, it \s finding unity in multiplicity or the uni- 
versal in the particular. But by this process the 
manifold and particular are manifestly not abolished. 
On the contrary, they are reaffirmed. Indeed, it is 
only in this way that they can be at all, even in the 
first instance, affirmed. The manifold and the par- 
ticular are gathered up into the universal — they are 
not cast away — and it is only in this way, as the 
science of knowledge has shown us, that any knowl- 
edge of them is possible. We understand, then, 
what the ancients meant, and what the moderns re- 
echo, by the saying that science — e7ti6rr})ur/, knowledge 
as such — is only of the universal. But not, I repeat, 
of an abstract universal — an universal abstracted or 
separated from the particular. Such an universal 
intelligence cannot think. In pretending to think 
or assert it, it pretends to think or assert absolute 
unreason and absolute unreality, or the absolutely 
absurd. The most perfect illustration of the abstract 
universal is the sensationalist's unknowable sub- 
strate, or thing-in-itself, or "force," which is at 
once supposed to contain all absolute reality and 
yet to be exclusive of all known reality. 14 It is the 
abstract (Eleatic) one, which is separated from all 



48 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

plurality and has consequently no power to explain 
the latter. It can enter as a term into no science. 
It is not only unthinkable, contradicting intelligence; 
it is also useless. It has nothing to do with science. 
It is no " result" of science. 

Knowledge, then, is of the concrete universal. 
The true universal alone is concrete. The particu- 
lar, to which only this name (" concrete ") is so 
often given, is, as such, indeed abstract. It is sep- 
arated, abstracted — or looked at in separation and 
abstraction from — the universal to which it belongs. 
As such, it is termed a mere "brute fact," which is 
not known, comprehended, rendered intelligible or an 
object of science, because viewed in abstraction from 
all but its immediate individual self. It is like the 
accidentally discovered member of an unknown or- 
ganism, which cannot be truly known until the idea 
of the whole organism is seen reflected in it and is 
read in or from it. The whole organism involves, 
includes, or comprehends it. The law of the whole 
is its law, and it is only through our knowledge of 
this law that we in turn comprehend the isolated fact 
or part. In purely physical science, of sensible phe- 
nomena, the reflected image or counterpart of the 
concrete, organic universal is law of co-existence or 
sequence, — scientific law. And a sensible phenom- 
enon is approximately known and comprehended, 
only when some such law has been discovered for it. 

The forms of knowledge or intelligence, now, were 
said above to be as members of one common organ- 
ism, sharing in a common life. And, indeed, it is 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 49 

obvious that they could not be forms or denote pro- 
cesses of intelligence if the reverse were true. They 
denote, as we have seen, activities, synthetic activi- 
ties, and an activity denotes an agent. Now if we 
were to suppose each activity to denote a separate 
agent, it is obvious that we should be introducing 
into the subject of intelligence just that unconnected 
diversity, which we had to escape from in the imme- 
diate sensible object of intelligence, in order to render 
the latter in any way possible or conceivable. 15 And 
we should also be flying in the face ot obvious fact. 
Each subject of intelligence is immediately aware that 
all the forms and products of his intelligence are his, 
that they belong to him, as one individual self, and not 
to another. The particular acts of synthesis, which 
follow the forms of the fundamental ''categories" of 
intelligence, are themselves again combined in the 
all-inclusive active synthesis of self-consciousness. 
In every act of conscious intelligence self-conscious- 
ness finds itself reflected — or, rather, realized. Self- 
consciousness is that " light " of intelligence, which 
we mentioned near the beginning of our inquiry. 
And if the special forms of intelligence are the mem- 
bers of an organism, self-consciousness represents 
this organism in its wholeness and entirety. It is 
the source of the common life and the common na- 
ture of all the members. And it is a pure, ideal ac- 
tivity. It is a "pure" activity, having no substrate; 
that is to say, it is not a mode of motion, which, as 
such, cannot be conceived and does not exist without 
something — some sort of "matter," whether ponder- 



50 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

able or imponderable — which is moved and which 
presupposes — or is relative to and, as men say, con- 
ditioned by — time and space; which latter are, the 
rather, demonstrably dependent functions, rather 
than independent conditions, of self-consciousness. 
It is an "ideal" activity, for none other can be or- 
ganic, diffusing itself through many members and 
yet always remaining the same — the one in and 
through the many. The activity of self-conscious- 
ness is also spontaneous; not that it is independent 
of its conditions, terms or factors, but that it is their 
mistress. It uses them — not, is tised by them. It 
is not simply — it, as such, is not in any sense — their 
mechanical resultante. But its material or objective 
content, so far as it is purely given in sense-con- 
ditioned consciousness, does result from the fore- 
mentioned conditions in a way that, in its first form 
and appearance, is for self-consciousness contingent 
and mechanical, or independent of its choice. 16 Yet 
sensible consciousness, as we have seen, does not be- 
come real consciousness until it is enfolded in the 
embrace of self-consciousness, or — more accurately 
expressed — until it is wrought, as a term, into the 
organic process of self-consciousness. This then is 
the state of the case, as regards the relation of " ob- 
jective " consciousness to self-consciousness in man. 
Objective consciousness becomes real, only when it 
becomes subjective, or a part and function of self- 
consciousness. And, on the other hand, self-con- 
sciousness becomes real, only when it finds an object 
and finds and realizes itself in that object. So far as 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 51 

the object is given in apparent independence of self- 
consciousness, we have just as much right to say- 
that the subject finds its forms in the object as that 
the subject puts its forms on the object. The one 
is just as true as the other. The individual, there- 
fore, as a knowing agent, finds himself set in the 
midst of an intelligible world, of which he is a part, 
or to which he is akin, and not placed as a knowing 
machine, over against a world, which is wholly un- 
related to him and refuses to have anything to do 
with the forms of his intelligence. The forms of his 
intelligence are the forms of the world's existence as 
a given object of intelligence, and vice versa. We 
can understand thus what Aristotle meant by term- 
ing the soul the "place of forms" and declaring 
that it knows by becoming in some sense its object 
or one with its object. The form of the (particular) 
object becomes for the time being — in the act of knowl- 
edge — the (particular) form of the subject. The sub- 
ject knows, recognizes, itself in and through this form 
and in and through the same form has — possesses and 
knows — its object. The important inferences, which 
this state of the case authorizes and enforces respect- 
ing the real nature of both subject and object may 
even now be foreseen, but their development must 
be reserved for our next lecture. 

But the " forms," the universal, are recognized 
only in the light of self-consciousness. Their recog- 
nition is the work of a self-conscious activity. We 
must never forget that the forms in question are 
according to the experimental science of knowl- 



52 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

edge, nothing, or at best only dead abstractions, 
when viewed independently of the self-conscious 
activity of which they are in their very nature or- 
ganic members. But the organic activity of self- 
consciousness is a spiritual one. It is personal. It 
is the radiating or expansive centre of a process 
which extends over the whole world of intelligence 
without ever losing itself. Wherever it goes, it is 
still "at home." 17 And yet, as we have seen, in 
man it is not an absolutely independent centre. 
On the contrary, it is dependent. It is only con- 
ditionally > relatively, quasi-mechanically dependent 
on so-called objective conditions. These are, for the 
rest, as we have already seen, nought but its other 
self. Or rather, they are organically, ideally one 
with the dependent forms of itself. But self-con- 
sciousness in man is intrinsically dependent upon 
an absolute self-consciousness. Man is, indeed, like 
the Leibnitzian monad, potentially a mirror of the 
whole universe. The latter is all potentially con- 
tained in his intelligence. But only potentially. 
The realization of intelligence implies a patient and 
long-continued labor, and the end is still always 
incomplete. Man finds himself, after all, only as an 
organic part of an intelligible world, in knowing 
which he assumes, with reference to it, the attitude 
of its organic head. This role, however, he only 
assumes; he does not fill it. Not only is it true 
that he never completely fills it; it is also impos- 
sible for him not to suppose that before he assumed 
it and while he still fragmentarily or incompletely 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 53 

fills it, it was and is eternally and absolutely filled 
by an absolute subject, an absolute self-conscious- 
ness, that neither waxes nor wanes, and is " without 
variableness or shadow of turning." The light of 
his own self-consciousness reveals itself as a bor- 
rowed light. It is organically dependent upon the 
light of an absolute self-consciousness, and, being 
organically dependent, the life and law of absolute 
self-consciousness are read in it. And again, being 
thus organically dependent on and hence depen- 
dency one with the absolute self-consciousness, the 
essential truth, in kind, of its own forms and of 
the normal results of its own labor, is guaranteed 
to it. 

Let us see how the case stands. The forms of 
sensibly objective knowledge, the forms of that 
knowledge whereby the world exists for us, are 
forms of intelligence; they are forms of the subject's 
intelligence. They are at once form and conditional 
result of a synthetic activity of intelligence subject 
to, or in organic dependence on and union with, the 
spiritual, personal process of self-consciousness. Of 
this much we may assure ourselves by following the 
track of Kant's demonstrations. But, on the other 
hand, they are not the peculiar forms of the indi- 
vidual subject. Not even Kant, with all his theo- 
retical subjectivism, would go so far as to admit 
that his " Critique of Pure Reason" was, after all, 
only a critique of his own — viz., of Immanuel Kant's 
and of no other person's — reason. On the contrary, 
the scientific nature and value of the results reached 



54 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

by him depended on their being demonstrably valid, 
not for one man, but for all men. Human intelli- 
gences are many; human intelligence is one. 18 But 
now, the world is not created by our intelligence. 
Nor does it exist as many separate times as it is 
known. It exists independently of our individual 
intelligence and independently of the intelligence 
of the whole aggregate of finite and knowing indi- 
viduals in the universe. It only remains, therefore, 
to suppose that the individual subject's synthetic 
activity in intelligence is not simply or primarily 
creative, but the rather recreative, not productive, 
but reproductive. The forms of synthesis, of intel- 
ligence, of universality, of law, nay, of spirit, are 
somehow there in objective existence, before we 
know them. Not being there by virtue of their 
dependence on and organic involution in the per- 
sonal self-consciousness of any finite individual, and 
yet being demonstrably inconceivable, except in 
such relation to some self-consciousness, it only 
remains possible — and the facts render it absolutely 
necessary — to see in them indices of a self-conscious- 
ness which is not subject to the limitations of fini- 
tude, but is infinite, not relative and dependent, but 
absolute and independent, not dependently particu- 
lar, but universal. And so the organic unity of 
object and subject — of the world of objective form 
and of subjective, individual intelligence — on which 
the possibility of knowledge was seen to depend, 
will itself be possible only because both object and 
subject, world and finite mind, are alike in living, 



PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 55 

organic dependence on absolute intelligence. The 
"light" of individual intelligence will be seen to 
exist only by reflection from, or through participa- 
tion in, the light of absolute intelligence, and we 
shall see with what perfect reason Aristotle could 
declare that the "active reason" of man, the true 
organon or agent of science, the faculty of the uni- 
versal, was " something divine," belonging not to 
the individual) as such, but entering into him "as by 
a door." And so we shall perhaps perceive that St. 
Paul was not speaking anything, but literal truth, 
when he denied " that we are sufficient of ourselves 
to think any thing as of our {individual) selves; but 
our sufficiency is of God " — who is the Universal and 
Absolute Self, and whose consciousness is the con- 
dition of all true consciousness, or of all conscious- 
ness of truth. 

We may conclude, then, by way of recapitula- 
tion, that the philosophic science of knowledge 
demonstrates — 

i. That knowledge is inexplicable on the sensa- 
tional theory of subject and object, in knowledge, 
as only different, or mechanically distinct, from 
each other; knowledge is therefore not a purely 
mechanical, sensible, or physical process; 

2. That subject and object, in spite of their nu- 
merical difference, must be organically one, and 
that they are indeed thus one in a spiritual pro- 
cess of self-consciousness which conditions, rather 
than is conditioned by time and space and their 
relations; 



56 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

3. That finite self-consciousness involves and re- 
veals its dependence on an absolute self-conscious- 
ness, which, provisionally, we can only call, in 
agreement with philosophy and religion, the self- 
consciousness of an absolute and divine Spirit. 



LECTURE III. 

THE ABSOLUTE OBJECT OF INTELLIGENCE; — OR, 
THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 

A GERMAN historian, of philosophic mind, ex- 
-*• ■*• presses a truth, that, in our first lecture, we 
have already briefly encountered, by saying that 
" the end of philosophy is the absolute, and the ab- 
solute is the beginning of theology." 1 In other words, 
theology and religion presuppose, or, rather, claim 
livingly to possess and exhibit, that truth which 
philosophy conquers only after a laborious siege 
against the strongholds of error and a prolonged 
and systematic approach to the citadel, where truth 
herself sits enthroned. Or, in still other words, the 
presupposition of religion is the highest fruit, or, at 
all events, the highest ideal, of intelligence. Re- 
ligion always claims to be a practical expression of 
the truth, of the truth par excellence, of the highest 
and last truth for man. Philosophy is, or aims to 
be, the reflective and systematic analysis and dem- 
onstration of absolute truths, — of truths which com- 
mand and comprehend all other truths, and of real- 
ities which bear a like relation to all other realities. 
It is only because of this relation of religion and 



58 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

philosophy to the same object, that the temporary 
or occasional appearance of conflict between them 
is possible. And it is only because of this same 
relation that in true philosophy — i. e. y in the fruits 
of comprehensive, catholic, thorough, and genuinely 
experimental inquiry respecting the universal nature 
and object of intelligence — true religion necessarily 
finds her own lineaments prefigured and the security 
of her own foundations demonstrated. That such 
is the relation of Christianity to the demonstrable 
results of philosophic inquiry — this is the main thesis 
of the present course of lectures. The two main 
subjects of philosophic investigation are — as has 
been previously indicated — the Science of Knowledge 
and the Science of Being or of Reality. From the 
result of our discussion of the former of these topics, 
one may, I imagine, already feel somewhat the close 
connection between philosophic inquiry and religion, 
and the immediate bearing of the former on the foun- 
dations of the latter. But before going on to con- 
template this connection and bearing more explicitly, 
and in special relation to Christianity, it will be nec- 
essary, in the present lecture, first to indicate in 
outline what conception philosophy establishes re- 
specting the absolute nature of reality. We have 
seen in brief what is the nature, and what are the 
ideal presuppositions of intelligence, as a "subjective" 
process. We have now to see what philosophy's 
impartial and complete examination of man's actual, 
living experience shows respecting the absolute na- 
ture of the object, or objects, of intelligence. 



-THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 59 

Mr. Matthew Arnold in one place refers to the 
question as to "what being really is," as a "tyro's 
question." 2 To the tyro it is, no doubt, a tyro's ques- 
tion, and, in the tyro's superficial way of conceiving 
and answering questions, is at once trivial and easily 
answered. But science and philosophy are not the 
affair of tyros, and in the view of science and phi- 
losophy the question referred to is the most funda- 
mental and comprehensive of all conceivable ques- 
tions. On the answer given to it depends logically 
and fundamentally the complete enlightenment or 
the total confusion of intelligence, and the everlast- 
ing quickening or the deadening paralysis of all the 
springs of man's most characteristic life — his life in 
love, and joy, and hope, in free society, in art, in re- 
ligion. Intelligence may indeed exist and be cultU 
vated in narrower spheres, without any express ref= 
erence to the ontological question. But in this case 
it is not complete. It does not wholly know itself, 
and its own implications, nor all that is really implied 
and given in its immediate objects. And since, after 
all, the ontological question is sure in some way to be 
raised and answered by every man- : \{ not consciously 
and "theoretically," then unconsciously and ^practir 
cally," no assurance is furnished, in the case supposed, 
that the answer may not fall out to the practical con- 
fusion of intelligence. The highest question of intel- 
ligence cannot be answered at haphazard, or, if thus 
answered, is almost sure to be answered wrong; and 
the wrong answer is, in this case, like the cloud that 
permanently qbscures the sun and makes men finally 



60 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to be perversely in love with darkness, rather than 
light, and even to mistake the former for the latter. 
It leads them, for example, expressly or practically 
to see in mechanical sense the standard and limit 
of organic intelligence, and in "sensible objects" 
the type of absolute reality — and a greater "con- 
fusion of intelligence " than this was never known. 
And so, again, practical life, in individuals, and in 
societies and nations, may be, and often is, covered 
with the fairest blossoms and fruitage of a noble, 
ideally determined civil polity, of genuinely inspired 
art, of morality and religion, while yet " the tyro's 
question" as to "what being really is" is never ex- 
pressly raised and consequently never expressly an- 
swered. But the fact is that such life really contains 
the true answer to the question. The answer is given, 
not in the abstract terms of a mere definition, but 
in concrete illustration, in living fact and act. True 
life is true being. But let, now, one who is born 
into the atmosphere of such life, have doubts and 
queries raised in his mind as to "what being really 
is." Let him, further, see no way to avoid admit- 
ting the conception, ever more or less prevalent 
among scientific men, of the world as pure mechan- 
ism, whose roots are in blind force. Then, since 
what is thus true of the world as a whole is true 
of all its parts, and since man, the individual, must 
regard himself as part and parcel of the world, the 
individual is forced to regard all the apparently 
spontaneous play and earnest purpose of his life as 
themselves pure mechanism; freedom is then neces- 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 61 

sarily viewed as an illusion, responsibility as a phan- 
tom, and existence is robbed of all its dignity and 
privilege. Is it not obvious that the practical bear- 
ings of ontology are of tremendous consequence ? 

One point has just been indirectly alluded to, 
which here, at the beginning of our discussion, needs 
to be more expressly emphasized. It is what is 
called the unity of being. The practical conse- 
quences of ontology, on which we have just been 
touching, flow, as is seen, from the assumed unity 
of existence. When we determine the fundamental 
and universal nature of all existence, we determine, 
by necessary inclusion, the fundamental and univer- 
sal nature of human, and of all other particular, 
existence. Of what nature the unity of being is, 
and how it is to be conceived, has already been 
partly indicated or prefigured, in our examination 
of the theory of knowledge, and will subsequently 
be more concretely illustrated. At present I re- 
mark only that the notion of the unity of being 
— in some sense — is fundamental and essential to 
all science. It is the express or implicit presup- 
position of all science. And everything depends, 
in ontology and theology, on the way in which this 
unity is understood. 

In the largest generalizations of physical science, 
no attempt is made to reach an absolute unity, 
but only a relative one — the unity, namely, of the 
sensibly phenomenal or material universe. Thus 
the earliest Greek inquirers, turning their atten- 
tion only to questions of speculative physics, only 



62 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

presupposed and attempted to demonstrate the unity 
of the physical universe in its proximate or sensible 
essence, as consisting of water, air, fire, or the like. 
Of precisely similar nature, or scientific quality, is 
our modern nebular hypothesis, with its accompany- 
ing theory of cosmical evolution. The unity which 
is sought in such theories is, we may say, not the 
unity of essential being, but of its sensible form or 
appearance. Attention is directed upon one sphere 
or aspect of existence, the so-called physical or sen- 
sible one, and search is directed for the one phenom- 
enal mode of such existence, which underlies all 
others and is the " unity " of all. Thales said that this 
mode was water, Anaximenes called it air, Heracli- 
tus fire, and Anaximander to aiteipov — the indefinite. 
Precisely so, modern science terms it unqualified, 
undifferentiated matter, in the "indefinite" form of 
a nebula. And it then seeks to trace the modal, 
but by no means the causal process, whereby from 
the originally homogeneous and indefinite condition 
the present heterogeneous and highly differentiated 
state of things came into existence. It constructs, 
as well as it can, the phenomenal history of the phy- 
sical universe. But what is the original nebula? 
What is matter? Wherein and by what power does 
it consist? What is the nature of that force whereby 
" matter " evolves — or, under material forms there 
is evolved — the varied and wonderful universe? Phy- 
sical science, as such, does not answer these ques- 
tions — its highest and last generalization, which 
transcends and includes even such theories as those 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 63 

just referred to, being that all that is physically 
knowable, in the absolute and final sense of the 
term, is figured space and motion. Note it well: 
not matter, as absolute substance, but figured space 
— a purely ideal form; and not force, but only the 
phenomenon of force, viz., motion. Matter, or abso- 
lute being in any form, is, for pure mathematical and 
physical science, confessedly " unknowable," and 
force is "inscrutable." 3 

Thus physical science finds, and, in truth, seeks, 
no absolute, but only a relative, unity of being, and 
that, too, not in the undivided realm of absolute or 
universal, but only of sensible or phenomenal exist- 
ence, and this, again, not in respect of real substance, 
but only in respect of phenomenal or apparent form 
or mode. And yet, as is seen, within its peculiar 
and limited sphere, and in its peculiar way, physical 
science illustrates the truth that being is one, and 
that the unity of being is the presupposition upon 
which alone any science is possible. This state of 
things, it will be remembered, was prefigured in our 
last lecture, where it was shown that all real science, 
all real knowledge, consists in a reduction of the par- 
ticular to the universal or in a comprehension of the 
many in the one. Or, otherwise, expressed, science 
exists only by virtue of its perception of the one in 
the many. 

Now, before leaving this point, let us advert once 
more to the circumstance, already rendered obvious, 
that the universal, to which physical science leads us, 
is an abstract one. Not only does pure physical sci- 



64 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ence make abstraction from all inquiry or profession of 
knowledge concerning the fundamental ontological 
conceptions of absolute or substantial freingand power, 
but also, in ideal or tendency, from the infinitely varied 
forms of sensible existence itself, as contained in our 
actual experience. In the language (substantially) 
of a recent German writer, the world, as it exists 
for all the other senses, is reduced to the blank mo- 
notony of a world existing only for the one sense of 
sight, — and this, too, not for our actual, living, va- 
ried, color- and form-distinguishing sight, but for an 
" ideal eye," capable of seeing everywhere nought 
but moving lines and points in space. 4 To this mo- 
notonous description is omne scibile reduced in the 
ideal of physical science. The physical universe, 
thus viewed, is originally nothing but an indefinite 
aggregate of undifferentiated parts — a side-by-side 
of particles, indifferent to each other — not an organ- 
ism of differentiated members, which imply and point 
to each other. Being is reduced to its own shadow. 
But, now, suppose that such a conception be, for 
whatever reason, adopted as the final and absolute, 
universal and all-comprehensive conception of exist- 
ence. Here the abstract finite and particular are 
elevated into the rank of strict identity with the con- 
crete infinite and universal, or, rather, the latter is 
degraded into identity with the former. This is the 
ideal of that kind of " pantheism," which the relig- 
ious consciousness universally and violently repudi- 
ates, and which, on grounds of scientific, experi- 
mental demonstration, is rejected by philosophy 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 65 

itself. This is the pantheism of purely phenome- 
nalistic mechanism; and it is real atheism, because it 
banishes spirit from the universe. Generically one 
with this — in spite of apparent differences — is the 
pantheism of the First Book of Spinoza's "Ethics." 
The fault which philosophic science finds with such 
a doctrine, is not that it asserts (in terms and in 
form) the unity of being, but that in it being is 
really not comprehended. The conception of "be- 
ing" employed is formed by abstraction from reality. 
The real and truly substantial is not included in it. 
As a consequence, the "unity "in question is not 
the true unity of real being, but an abstract and 
formal one. It is derivative, and not primary — a 
quasi-unity, or a so-called mechanical unity, not a 
real, viz., an organic one. More than once has phi- 
losophy furnished the demonstration that the con- 
dition of all perception or conception of mechanical 
unity — the unity of a mere sensible, or time-and- 
space-conditioned aggregate — is the express or im- 
plicit perception and conception of organic unity. 
Mechanical unity is abstracted from and hence 
always presupposes organic unity, and the true 
unity of being must hence be of this latter kind. 

Our present inquiry concerns immediately and 
especially the "absolute object of intelligence, or, 
the philosophic theory of reality." In the phrase, 
" object of intelligence," it is important that we put 
stress on both of the substantives employed, "ob- 
ject" and "intelligence." That abstract quasi-phi- 
losophic science which, borrowing its method and 



66 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

presuppositions and hence receiving its limitations 
from mathematical and physical science, issues vari- 
ously in Spinozistic dogmatism, in materialism, and 
in English agnosticism, stops short with the demon- 
stration of an apparent "object of (so-called) intelli- 
gence," but does not raise this, into an "object of 
(true) intelligencer The expression " agnosticism," 
adopted by a large section of the votaries of such 
" science," is a voluntary and truthful confession of 
this fact. That intelligence has, and must have, an 
object, it requires little or no science to demonstrate. 
Any one capable of the slightest degree of analytic 
reflection, recognizes at once the truth in question. 
Apparently the simplest, and certainly the first and 
most obvious illustration of it, is furnished in the 
case of sensible knowledge. Every one knows that 
there is no sight without objects of sight, and, in gen- 
eral, no sensible knowledge without objects of such 
knowledge. Every one, too, is endowed by nature 
with the power of looking at and directing all ap- 
propriate senses upon such objects, and of distin- 
guishing them, comparing, recognizing them, and 
describing the phenomena with which they present 
themselves. This one may do without necessarily 
inquiring or in the least knowing what that process 
of intelligence is, whereby he knows — and what are 
its implications — any more than, in order to walk, 
one must first explicitly know all about the mechan- 
ics of walking and the anatomy and physiology of 
the human frame. Now this process of analytic 
description may be carried on indefinitely, or up to 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 67 

the very final limit of purely sensible knowledge (or, 
what amounts to the same thing, of ''pure physical 
science,") 5 with the like essential ignorance of the 
science of knowledge as such. The question con- 
stantly is, and is only, respecting that which we 
either actually or constructively see, what we find, 
what is mechanically presented or given for external 
observation. And the knowledge, which we thus 
acquire, seems to us so satisfactory — so certain, so 
real, so final — that we heartily and credulously take 
it for the type and standard of all true knowledge — 
exclaiming, with the poet, 

" Knowledge is of what we see," 

thus, as it were, making mechanical sight the genus 
of which knowledge is to be considered as a species, 
or, making knowledge a mechanical result of seeing, 
rather than sight a spiritual-organic function and 
dependently instrumental condition of knowledge or 
intelligence. And yet this very "knowledge," car- 
ried to its final issue, corrects and refutes itself. It 
corrects and refutes the assumption of the eye that 
it sees colors, of the ear that it hears sounds, of the 
mouth that it tastes sweet and bitter objects, and of 
sight and touch combined that they see and feel ab- 
solute, objective, per se existent matter. It denies 
that we sensibly perceive and hence (from its point 
of view) know the power of the mind or any other 
power or force whatsoever. Sensible knowledge, 
apparently so rich and full and concrete, thus again 
demonstrates itself to be in reality, when taken purely 



68 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

by itself, in the highest degree abstract and empty. 
Not only, namely, does it, as above noted, abstract 
from the ontological conceptions — and realities — of 
essential, substantive being and power — the "belief" 
in which accompanies the sceptical physicist or ag- 
nostic to the very end of his inquiries, but his ulti- 
mate positive conceptions (" configuration and mo- 
tion,") or the final "object of his intelligence," remain 
empty of significance/"^ intelligence. And "empty" 
in a double and triple sense: (i) by reason of the ab- 
straction just noted; (2) because "configuration and 
motion" are not themselves principles of or for intel- 
ligence, whereby the so-called evolution of the actual 
universe from them may be explained; they are ab- 
stract modalities, and not real and efficient essences; 
(3) because the so-called sensible ultimates, motion 
and configuration, when closely viewed, as objects 
of purely or characteristically sensible knowledge, 
turn out to be, not what they were first supposed, 
viz., absolutely non-mental objects of intelligence — 
separate from and independent of the latter— but 
" modifications," and so identical parts of intelli- 
gence (= here, sensible consciousness) itself. 

Sensible knowledge thus finds itself finally con- 
fronted with a paradox, which, as our last lecture 
showed us, it is, of itself, unable to explain, viz., that 
its object is no real independent object — is not inde- 
pendently objective — but is, the rather, identical with, 
or "a modification" of, the subject. Even its alleged 
"object of intelligence," appears not to be a true object. 
But the point which it is more important for us to 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 69 

note here is that, admitting - the alleged object to be, 
in its way, a true object, it is yet not an " object of 
intelligence^ For this is what we must say respect- 
ing all objects which appear in the guise of mere ob- 
jects, inherently unrelated to or separate from the 
subject, — or respecting all objects concerning which 
the utmost which we can say is that they are given. 
And this is the case with "configuration and mo- 
tion," regarded from the point of view of pure phys- 
ical science, or sensible knowledge, alone. They are 
given, are facts, presented, apparently, in indepen- 
dence of intelligence. Intelligence simply accepts 
them. With reference to intelligence they are acci- 
dental. Something else might just as well have been 
given, for aught intelligence here perceives. They 
present (from the point of view which we are now 
considering) an inherent contradiction, inasmuch as 
they assume the form of unijttelligible objects of in- 
telligence! The state of the case with reference to 
the objects of sensible knowledge, as such, is some- 
times aptly expressed by saying that they are facts 
and not truths. But the field and the true atmos- 
phere of intelligence are truth. Intelligence is the 
active and living organ of truth — its true nature be- 
ing embedded in truth — its only possible and real 
objective nourishment being the truth. Mere facts 
are only signs of truth, not truth itself, and the lat- 
ter alone can be and is the true and final — not merely 
quasi and provisional — object of intelligence. 

The predicate being is applied to the object of 
intelligence. The object (in the first instance) is 



70 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

alone held to be real. In other words, that is 
which is known. Knowledge and being are correla- 
tive terms. When we know therefore what is the 
true object of knowledge, we know what is the final 
and absolute significance of the terms being and 
reality. We have just spoken of truth as the true 
object of intelligence. If, in so doing, we spoke 
truly, then it will follow that truth, being, and 
reality, are synonyms. Only, it will be necessary 
to determine in what sense the word truth is to be 
understood. Obviously, we may anticipate that it 
cannot have, as thus ontologically applied, the ab- 
stract and dead significance which belongs to the 
term in purely formal logic. In what sense it is to 
be understood, will presently appear. 

That " configuration and motion," as the ultimate 
facts of sensibly-conditioned — or pure physical- 
science, are not per se, or independently consid- 
ered, intelligible, or true and final objects of, or sub- 
stantial truths for, mtelligence, is shown by the cir- 
cumstance that the physicist himself is compelled, 
in his description and explanation of the physical 
universe, to speak the metaphysical language of 
materialism and dynamism. In other words, he 
speaks, and is practically obliged to speak, in every 
breath of "matter" ("atoms") and (blind) "forces." 
He knows, and confesses that he knows, nothing of 
absolute matter and force, and that in employing 
these terms he merely employs artificial symbols, 
like the x and y of algebra. But sometimes phys- 
ical science forgets its own limitations — or rather, 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 71 

its self-appointed interpreters forget them, and then 
speak as if matter — intrinsically inert and atomically 
constituted — and blind force were known as that in 
which true, objective being resides. 6 Still more often 
is this error committed by the popular consciousness, 
which knows little or nothing of the limitations of 
physical science and is too generally accustomed to 
look to the latter for final and authoritative illumi- 
nation respecting the ultimate problems of intelli- 
gence. But even if matter, as above described, and 
blind force were known to exist — and in a certain, 
relative way of speaking, it is true to say of them 
that they do exist — yet it could, and can, only be 
said of them, as of motion and configuration, that 
they exist only as immediate, relative, and depen- 
dent objects, but not as objects of intelligence — not 
as constituting the object of intelligence, not as the 
truth, but only as signs and symbols, or " the lan- 
guage " in which truth and reality are expressed. 

It is time for us, after all this negative prepara- 
tion, to revert to the results of our inquiry (in the 
preceding lecture) respecting the science of knowl- 
edge, and on this the only solid basis for our present 
inquiry, to develop succinctly the positive results, 
of which we are in quest. 

The science of knowledge shows us subject and 
object, or intelligence and being, in organic unity. 
It follows hence (i) that the distinction made be- 
tween intelligence and being is a purely formal or 
logical one, not real. Being, in other words, in- 
cludes intelligence, or intelligence and being have 



72 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

something in common. But, (2) if this be so, then 
the nature of being is primarily revealed in intelli- 
gence. It is revealed, I say, in other words, to 
intelligence from within, from the inner depths of 
its own nature or precinct, and not from without. 
A revelation absolutely and unqualifiedly from with- 
out were impossible and is a pure, or rather, an im- 
pure, figment of the unreflecting imagination. Such 
relative revelation of being from without as is made 
to us in sensible perception is only initiatory, super- 
ficial, and symbolic, and possible only because that 
which is symbolized is organically one in its being 
with the being which is revealed within intelligence. 
(3) The revelation of being in intelligence necessar- 
ily takes — as must at once be seen— the form of 
self-intelligence, self-knowledge, or self-conscious- 
ness. These various terms are all designations of 
one and the self-same activity, and this activity is 
the fundamental activity of living spirit. They are 
designations, I say, of one activity. But when I say 
one, I do not mean mechanically single or simple, as 
though the activity in question were like the mo- 
tion of a point in a straight line; (such motion, for 
the rest, is in no true or fundamental sense an ac- 
tivity, but at most only the sign and effect of one) 
It is not simple, but complex. And not complex, 
again, in the sense in which a so-called system of 
motions, that tend to one end, is complex; for (not 
to mention that a complex system of mere motions 
no more constitutes a true activity than does a single 
motion) the unity of such a system is not organic, 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 73 

internal, and essential, but mechanical, external, and 
superficial; it is only the apparent and perishable uni- 
ty of parts which are per se indifferent to each other 
and may conceivably be separated without losing 
their identity. No, the unity in question is a living 
one. It is a unity, not simply in spite of, but by 
very virtue of complexity, an identity, the very con- 
dition of whose existence is diversity. The one and 
indivisible ego, self, or spirit, whose function is in- 
telligence, is one in, through, and by virtue of its 
self-intelligence, which latter is a complex process: 
the same permanent reality — variously styled " sub- 
ject," " spirit," "self," etc., — distinguishes itself as 
subject and object (it, as subject, knows itself as 
object), and this as the very condition upon which 
alone it can know itself to be one, and can in fact 
be one. Here we have an ideal activity which 
(paradoxical as this may sound) constitutes the 
agent: the agent is only through its activity? 

(4) Being, like knowledge, is thus primarily re- 
vealed as a spiritual activity. Almost the first 
lesson which the beginner in philosophy has to 
learn is this, that nought essentially exists by mere 
inertia. Existence, as such, or absolutely and truly 
considered, is in no sense whatever passive, but is 
absolutely and only active. When Leibnitz declared 
activity to belong to the very essence of substantial 
existence, 8 he seemed to utter a paradox, but ex- 
pressed in fact a truth which has been, in substance, 
familiar to, and demonstrated by, real philosophic 
science, in every age in which such science has 



74 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

existed, and which deserves to be set down as first 
and foremost among the permanent achievements 
of genuine, truly experimental philosophy. The dif- 
ficulty of learning it arises only from the force of a 
prejudice or habit, precisely like that which stood in 
the way of the acceptance of the Copernican as- 
tronomy. Just as, per demonstrations of physical 
science, the whole sensible universe would at once 
collapse into the blank nothingness of indistinguish- 
able night, were all motion to cease, so philosophic 
science demonstrates that were activity — i. e., the 
Life of Spirit — to cease, existence itself, including 
time and space, would absolutely vanish. Where 
there is no doing, there is no being. It is doing, 
activity — the Aristotelian erepyeia and evrsAs'xeia — 
which constitutes being or reality \ — and activity, I 
have just said, is "Life of Spirit" (reversing Aris- 
totle's phrase, " Life = Activity of Spirit"); 9 or, it is 
the reality of Spirit. Or, in other words, absolute 
being, and all " being as such," is spiritual. 

It is the application of these truths to the inter- 
pretation of physical science and its conceptions, 
that excites at once the greatest curiosity, the most 
invincible incredulity, and the most passionate re- 
sistance. Curiosity and incredulity, because a spir- 
itualistic interpretation of the physical universe, — 
nay, the very pretense that it is susceptible of such 
interpretation, (not to say, that this is the only 
possible one,) runs so decidedly counter to that 
which, to most men, seems at first most immediately 
and irrevocably certain. But the incredulous forget 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 75 

in this connection, that certainty and truth may be, 
and, in the present case, are, separated by a wide 
interval. All of our immediate sensible conscious- 
ness is certain; it certainly exists; we are directly 
and unqualifiedly certain of it. But, in possessing 
this certainty, we are not necessarily in possession 
of any substantial truth. This distinction, between 
certainty and truth (the same as the one above 
mentioned, between fact and truth,) is of the great- 
est practical importance, and is one which we easily 
forget, if indeed we ever reflect upon it or even be- 
come explicitly aware of it at all. 10 And yet the 
distinction does not necessarily amount to real op- 
position. On the contrary, in spite of the wide in- 
terval which may separate them, certainty, rightly 
viewed, is but implicit truth; and truth is developed 
— explicated — certitude. The opposition between 
them is in reality only apparent, not real, and ex- 
ists rather between a premature and unscientific — 
hence inexperimental and unjustifiable — interpreta- 
tion of that which forms the immediate subject-matter 
of our certitude and the true interpretation, than 
between this subject-matter and the truth which 
philosophy — or absolute scientific inquiry — estab- 
lishes concerning it. In our immediate sensible 
consciousness we seem to be directly certified of the 
existence of a world of absolute matter, the scene 
of blind physical forces, and it is to this apparent 
certitude that we tenaciously cling, incredulous of a 
truth which not so much merely overthrows, as 
purifies and explains it. Our immediate sensible 



76 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

consciousness, then, is unquestionably " certain," 
but this by no means carries with it the certainty of 
the existence of an absolute form of being, called 
matter, whose fundamental attribute consists in an 
inert and impenetrable occupation of space. On the 
contrary, physical science itself, which presents noth- 
ing but the results of an exact analytic exploration 
of the immediate content of sensible consciousness, 
declares, as we have seen, that such consciousness 
contains — so to express it — nothing but itself, or jts 
own modifications — which latter, in their subjective 
aspect, are called mental phenomena, and in their 
objective aspect, are all comprehended, not under 
the conceptions of absolute matter and force, but 
only under those of configuration and motion. 11 
Sensible consciousness, now, can be certain or can 
give rise to true certainty, only concerning that 
which it really contains, — this, surely, no one will 
doubt, — and if it contains no real evidence of the 
existence of an absolutely non-spiritual, material 
world, it certainly must be a mistake for us to sup- 
pose that through it we are made certain of its 
existence. The fact that we assume and pertina- 
ciously believe in the existence of absolute matter, 
in spite of the fact that it is not contained in our 
immediate sensible consciousness, simply shows 
that sensible consciousness does not fill up the 
whole circle of human intelligence and requires 
something outside of itself for its own complete 
explanation. 12 And in the case of any -explanation 
to be offered, all that can be demanded in the name 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 77 

of sensible consciousness — or " pure physical sci- 
ence " — is that the principle of explanation shall 
not directly or indirectly conflict in its application, 
with the immediate facts — phenomena, laws — of 
sensible consciousness itself. The " passionate re- 
sistance " above mentioned as being made to the 
spiritualistic interpretation of physical conceptions 
which philosophy offers, is inspired mainly by the 
fear lest the foregoing demand should not be re- 
spected — a fear which is surely wholly needless. 

The conception of absolute unspiritual matter is 
an unrealizable one and absurd, because in direct 
conflict with the fundamental law of intelligence as 
established in the science of knowledge. This law 
requires subject and object, while different and 
apparently opposed, to be nevertheless organically 
one. The difference, in other words, must be only 
relative, not absolute. 13 But the supposition of ab- 
solute matter, and of this as known, or as an object 
of intelligence, is an hypothesis in direct and abso- 
lute conflict with this law. No wonder that the 
putative object of this conception — matter — remains 
wholly unthinkable, " unknowable," and its exist- 
ence without shadow of demonstration. But the 
unthinkableness and indemonstrableness of absolute 
matter by no means demonstrates the truth of sub- 
jective idealism, or that the physical universe exists 
only in the form of transient phenomena of individ- 
ual consciousness. This supposition is no less un- 
thinkable than the former and is opposed to another 
part of that same law of intelligence, with which the 



78 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

supposition of absolute matter conflicts. For if one 
part of that law required that subject and object 
should be joined together in a bond of essential 
unity, (and thus excluded the supposition of abso- 
lute matter,) another part of the same law requires 
that subject and object shall be really distinct; and 
with this requirement the doctrine of subjective or 
phenomenalistic idealism stands in conflict. No, the 
physical universe is not a mere dream or phantas- 
magoria; it is not a picture in my and your brain, — 
a picture, for the rest, which, if the theory of abso- 
lute subjective idealism were true, would have to be 
regarded as a picture of nothing. The physical or, 
as it is called, the material universe is a true and 
ideal object of intelligence. As such it possesses 
being, but not, as per results of the science of 
knowledge, a being which is incommensurate with 
or opposed to intelligence, but a being which is, in 
spite of difference and distinction, of the same kith 
and kin with intelligence itself. Its being, in other 
words, is in its foundations — its source and its goal- 
living and spiritual — it is a manifestation of the " life 
of spirit." It is a manifestation of this life, not con- 
centrated in the form of personality, but dispersed 
in the form of externality, and realizing itself subject 
to the law of a temporal process. Its being, there- 
fore, is not independent and original, but dependent 
and derived. 14 

The most fundamental physical conceptions are 
those of externality, or Space and Time. The ex- 
istence of space and time, it is said, is the condition 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 79 

of the existence of matter. And those who believe 
(or, rather, think they believe) in the being of abso- 
lutely non-spiritual matter, find, or have often found, 
a difficulty in conceiving how any existence what- 
ever — and especially the existence of God — was con- 
ceivable, unless it were supposed to be conditioned 
by space and time, and hence " material." Such per- 
sons show that their whole and only conception of 
absolute being is materialistic, sensible, mechanical, 
i. e. y in fact, abstract, inexperimental, "a priori" 
and " metaphysical; " of spirit they know nothing 
but the name. Matter exists only in space, as the 
contained exists in» the container. This is the first 
and obvious state of the case, as it presents itself to 
immediate sensible consciousness. Matter — thus the 
case is substantially viewed — exists as one thing, and 
space exists as another thing. If matter exists, much 
more must — in the estimation of a naive materialism 
— space be held to possess absolute and independent 
existence. But how it, the impalpable, can exist, and 
that as the condition of all palpable existence, this 
is one of the questions which materialism is never 
able to answer, and remains as one of its final "in- 
explicabilities." It can only continue with blind and 
pertinacious obstinacy to assert the fact of the exist- 
ence of space (and time), while confessedly unable 
to utter one rational word with reference to its how 
or what, or with reference to its " truth." 15 

Materialism, with its na*ive, inexperimental, and 
unscientific way of looking at ontological questions 
is compelled to regard space and time as two pecu- 



80 PHILOSOPHY AXD CHRISTIANITY. 

liar and special kinds of being; whereas they are not 
independent] kinds, but only dependent modes, of 

being. Such existence as matter possesses, it pos- 
sesses indeed only in dependence on space and time, 
and so the existence of matter is a doubly dependent 
one. Space and time are the proximate condition 
of matter: but the condition of the existence of space 
and time themselves is the absolute being of living, 
active spirit. 

The being of space and time and matter is revealed 
to experimental, philosophic inquiry as dependently 
and organically one — not mechanically or numeri- 
cally identical — with the absolute being of Absolute 
Spirit. 13 -Materialism, in its conceptions of matter 
and space, errs with blind and absolutely unscienti- 
fic, unintelligent dogmatism, against the first and 
simplest principle of ontology and of intelligence, 
viz., the principle of the unity of being. Space, in its 
view, is one kind of being, and matter is another, 
and the two are conceived as indifferent to each other. 
Thus it is imagined that the nature of matter is out 
of all relation to the nature of space, so that space 
might contain it just as well, even if its nature were 
quite different from what it actually is, and so that, as 
matter of fact, it does "contain" indeed another kind 
of being, viz., spiritual being (provided, of course, 
that such a kind of being actually exists at all). 17 
But this view is wholly and naively dogmatic, being 
flatly opposed to the results of scientific, experimental 
inquiry and in absurd and violent contradiction with 
the first principles of thought and of being. [Unity 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 81 

of being and unity of knowledge.) Philosophy de- 
monstrates the ideal-real — i. e., the spiritual — nature 
(the spiritual derivation) of space and time. It 
shows them to be equally subjective and objective, 
hence, in their sphere, universal, or at once indepen- 
dent and inclusive of the particular (individual) sub- 
ject and objects of our sensible consciousness. They 
are, therefore, living, constantly-maintained products 
of an absolute activity, which transcends and includes 
all subjects and objects, — the activity (in the last re- 
sort) of absolute spirit, or, rather, of the Absolute 
Spirit, of God. I cannot, of course, be expected or 
permitted to enter here into all the details of the 
explanation of matter, as furnished by philosophic 
science. It suffices to say that the proximate root 
of matter is found to consist in " force," and force is, 
for philosophy, nothing but a function of spirit. Ma- 
terialism says, Where there is no matter there is no 
force — making matter the creative condition of force. 
Philosophy says, on the contrary, and proves that 
force is the creative condition of " matter." It shows 
the necessary and conditioning relation of force, as 
a spiritual function, to space and time, as themselves 
also spiritual functions. It finds in the sensibly ob- 
servable manifestations of force, with their fixed me- 
chanical laws, evidences of the omnipresent and 
ever-present and all-sustaining activity of immuta- 
ble, effective, spiritual being. The " mechanical " 
means, etymologically, much the same as the "in- 
strumental." And so philosophic science finds, in- 
deed, that the mechanico-physical universe, as such, 



82 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

is instrumental. It is instrumental as serving to ex- 
press symbolically, — and hence, like all symbolic 
expression, in a way which "half reveals, and half 
conceals " — the thought, i. e., the power and nature, 
of the Absolute Spirit, which is the Being of all beings, 
the original and originative essence of all existence. 
But it is also instrumental in a more immediate and 
obvious way. The whole mechanism of material or 
phenomenal existence reveals immediately its tele- 
ological nature, or that it exists for a use or pur- 
pose, and that use not a remote and extrinsic one, 
but an immediate and intrinsic, or "immanent," one. 
Aristotle of old saw clearly, and pointed out, how 
every thing that exists "by nature," exists only as 
it actively realizes its existence, and realizes its ex- 
istence only as it fulfils a law, or process, which is 
the law or process of its existence. 18 It performs a 
"work" — or, a work is performed in it — and this 
work is none other than the realization of its pecu- 
liar type or idea, its good, or purpose. Indeed, 
Aristotle perceived how motion itself, (which we are 
accustomed to think of only in its most abstract form, 
as mere change of place, or, at most as a merely 
" mechanical" product of time and space, — viewing 
it, for the rest, simply as a brute, inexplicable "fact," 
and not seeing, or, perhaps, ever imagining that any 
one ever did or could see in it anything else, any 
"truth") Aristotle, I say, perceived how motion, 
even thus conceived in its most abstract or ideally 
empty form, presupposed and was conditioned by 
that other kind of "motion," which consists in the 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 83 

realization of a type or idea, and which is thus shown 
to be an ideally conditioned and hence a spiritual 
process; or, otherwise expressed, Aristotle saw, or 
at all events saw and said enough to enable us, if 
we will, clearly to perceive, that the genus of mo- 
tion is not change of place, but fulfilment of purpose. 19 
However this may be, the activities of organic nature 
present to us a scene, in which not only the "fittest" 
— which is nothing other than that which is best 
adapted to its purpose — " survives," but also (which 
is much more to our present purpose) in which the 
law, type, and nature of intelligence are visibly re- 
produced, in a magnificent " object-lesson," before 
our very eyes. Intelligence, self-consciousness, is, 
as we saw, a process in which the one subject iden- 
tifies with itself its many objects. It goes out among 
its objects and never loses itself. It makes them at 
once instrumental to, and also integrant portions 
of, its own life and being. This process we have al- 
ready termed " organic." For indeed it is just such 
a process, in kind, that is set before us explicitly in 
what we are pleased to term, especially, " organic " 
nature, (as though all nature and all existence were 
not in a radical sense organic — i. e., rooted in and 
illustrative of the law and nature of intelligence). 
For, in every living physical organism all the " cir- 
culation of matter," all the oscillatory tumbling and 
jostling of atoms, is inexorably subject and subser- 
vient to the law of a process, whereby one idea, one 
life, one law, maintains itself through the multitude 
of parts. Here Nature shows explicitly that her 



84 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

being is grounded in spirit, that her life is the life 
(Plotinus used to say, the "sleeping life") of spirit. 
She thus points everywhere backwards and upwards 
to the Absolute Spirit as the ever-present and omni- 
present ground and creative source of her own exist- 
ence. But also, and in particular, through the series 
of her forms, which advance through a rising scale 
in ideal content, worth, and significance, she points to 
the full and explicit development of finite self-con- 
sciousness, as in man, as the proximate end to which 
all her varied activity is (again) but " instrumental." 
The application of our ontological principles as 
founded on the science of knowledge to the concep- 
tion and interpretation of human existence, or the 
explanation of the nature of man, is obvious. For 
the science of knowledge discloses — demonstrates — 
knowledge as, in its fundamental and all-condition- 
ing nature, a spiritual process. And the "subject" 
or agent in this process is, as we have seen, not 
something mechanically separate or apart from the 
process. The rather, it is organically one with and 
even constituted by the process itself. It is there- 
fore itself spiritual. But the "subject" or "agent" 
is man. Man, therefore, is primarily, fundamentally, 
and essentially a spirit. And if a distinction is to 
be made between spirit (or "soul") and body in 
man, we must say that man is a spirit and has a 
body, rather than that he is a body and has a soul. 
In short, man is man y only as he is spirit. What 
the relation of the knowledge of man as a spirit 
must be to the solution of the problems of moral 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 85 

philosophy, which is the true science of man, — and 
how, indeed, no solution of these problems is possi- 
ble except on the basis of such knowledge, — all this 
will be accepted, without further explanation at this 
point, as obvious enough. 20 

Not less obvious is the relation of the principles 
in question to theism. Indeed, the recognition of 
the principles is nothing other than the recognition 
of theism itself. The "unity of being" (meaning of 
the absolute "object" of intelligence), which philoso- 
phy in the name of the very possibility of thought 
itself, inexorably demands, can be for us, and is 
indeed for philosophy, none other than the unity of 
Absolute Spirit. 

We have seen the absolute condition of knowledge 
to be the organic union or " identity" of subject and 
object. The subjective must bear the character of 
the objective, and the objective of the subjective. 
In the realm of the relatively objective — the world 
of sensible phenomena — we find this condition only 
measurably or, as we may say, potentially fulfilled. 
In the realm of absolute objectivity the condition 
must be absolutely fulfilled, and the absolute object 
of intelligence can, accordingly, only be, and be 
conceived and known, as Absolute Spirit. The ab- 
solute object of intelligence must, like the human 
subject, be itself a subject; and man who knows, 
must himself also — as the supreme condition of all 
his own knowing — be an object of knowledge to the 
everlasting and absolute Subject. 21 

The " unity of being," then, is, I repeat, for phi- 



86 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

losophy, the unity of Absolute Spirit. What such a 
unity is and what it implies, has, I trust, already 
been made sufficiently obvious. It is not an abstract 
unity, like that of the mathematical point, or of 
"homogeneous matter," nor a unity without inherent 
difference, like that of space or time. It is a con- 
crete unity — a unity through and by virtue of differ- 
ence, 22 and hence active and living. It is, in virtue of 
the principles of the concretely experimental scie?ice 
of knowledge, a unity of intelligence and of power. It 
is a unity which is centred in personality and self- 
consciousness. It is the unity of God. From the 
ascription to the absolute being of self-conscious 
personality, many persons have in modern times 
professed to find themselves deterred by what seem 
to them insuperable scientific difficulties. Person- 
ality appears to them to be a special mark of finitude 
and hence something which must not be attributed 
to the Infinite Being. These objections are raised 
mostly by those whose eyes have not been trained 
to discern, and whose intelligence is equally un- 
trained to comprehend, spiritual — i. e. y living, actual 
— relations. Their thought being accustomed to move 
only among sensible categories and consequently to 
take in none but mechanical relations, is either wholly 
at a loss or is completely blinded and misled, when 
occasion arises for the apprehension or recognition 
of anything whose essence is " supersensible," i. e., 
genuinely vital and hence spiritual. Such persons, 
therefore, identify personality, which is essentially 
a spiritual category, and so transcends and condi- 



THE PHILOSOPHIC THEORY OF REALITY. 87 

tions space and time and their relations, with sensi- 
ble, numerical individuality, which is an affair merely 
of limitation in and by space and time. By such 
individuality, one is pro tanto cut off from connection 
with all the rest of existence, and is indeed pre- 
eminently finite. But by his self-conscious person- 
ality, on the contrary, man finds himself, not cut 
off from, but indissolubly bound up with, all the rest 
of existence, including the Absolute (God) itself. 23 
It is thus precisely by his personality that man finds 
himself taking - hold upon the infinite, joined to it, 
and capable of becoming organically one with it, 
So it is through his personality that he is the image 
of the infinite, or made as the Scriptures have it, 
"in the image of God." " In the image," — this im- 
plies, not that the personality of man is a perfect 
reproduction of the self-conscious existence of God, 
but only that it is more or less like it, and that the 
more perfectly, the more perfectly the human per- 
sonality, with its necessary moral and intellectual at- 
tributes, is developed. What man, therefore, through 
his personality is finitely, imperfectly, dependently, 
that God — the Absolute — is infinitely, perfectly, inde- 
pendently. With this view of the divine nature, which 
philosophic science — the science of man's absolute 
experience — forces upon us, and with this view alone, 
can we, while holding fast to the necessary and fun- 
damental doctrine of the unity of being, still main- 
tain and comprehend the true and morally respon- 
sible independence of man. This view is the only 
one, which does not necessarily lead to the errors 



88 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of atheism and pantheism. It is also the only one, 
with which the doctrine of the unity of being is ex- 
perimentally consistent. If God is a spirit, and if 
man is a spirit, and if the root of all existence what- 
soever is spiritual, then, and only then, can unity — 
organic, living unity, namely — consist with real dif- 
ference and plurality, and the independent absolute 
with the dependent relative. Upon any other than 
the spiritualistic (and experimental) view of the na- 
ture of absolute being, the plurality of particular, 
finite existence is reduced to the rank of a mere 
insubstantial phenomenon, or of a mere irrespon- 
sible " bubble on the ocean of existence," as pan- 
theists like to express it. 

But to this and other points, which have been 
suggested or which will readily suggest themselves, 
we may have occasion to return in subsequent lec- 
tures. Let us hope, only, that the basis of doctrine, 
which we have now won, may serve to facilitate our 
subsequent progress. 



LECTURE IV. 

THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 

HHHAT, in planning- and preparing the present 
-*- course of lectures, I should feel an irresistible 
tendency to go back in thought to the time, years 
ago, when, for a limited period, I too was registered 
as a student of theology within these walls, to re- 
flect on the intellectual experiences through which 
I then passed, and, judging of your needs by what 
my own then were, to seek in some measure to min- 
ister to you even as I would gladly have been minis- 
tered to, — all this you can readily understand. The 
position of one disposed to thoughtful and thorough 
study of " the faith delivered to the saints," or of 
what currently and worthily passes for theological 
truth, was then, and is still, beset with many diffi- 
culties and perplexities. Here — so one must argue 
to himself on contemplating the body of doctrine 
which he is beginning to study, and which he has 
already nominally accepted before beginning to 
" study" it — here is a body of doctrine which claims 
to be the truth, the truth par excellence, or, at all 
events, to rest on and so, directly or indirectly, to 
contain the revelation of such truth. But what is 

(89) 



90 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

truth ? Truth exists for intelligence; it is the proper 
object of intelligence, of knowledge. Truth is truth 
of fact, — that is to say, it has in immediate fact its 
warrant and evidence. But — so one must go on to 
say to himself — is the truth which I accept as " re- 
vealed " indeed truth for my intelligence ? Is it really 
an object of knowledge to me ? Has my intelligence 
passed, with reference to the alleged facts of " reve- 
lation", from the state of mere information respect- 
ing the facts as reported or alleged, to the state of 
knowledge that -the facts are indeed facts, or that 
they contain indeed the truth which they are reputed 
to contain? And here, of course, the question- is 
not simply concerning the outward historical credi- 
bility of sacred narratives, or details of dogmatic 
definition, but, rather, concerning that which lies 
both deeper than and above all these things and 
about which, if any doubt remains, all time devoted 
to narratives and definitions is wholly wasted. The 
" truth " in question is often — and rightly — termed 
" spiritual truth." It is ostensibly truth about man 
as a spirit, about " God," the absolute and everlast- 
ing Being, as also a spirit, and about the relations 
which, as matter of immediate fact, actually subsist 
between the two, or which, as matter of right, duty, 
or privilege, should and may exist between them. 
Thus it is also termed peculiarly religious truth, and 
with absolute right: — for, as we shall subsequently 
more fully see, religion and, hence, religious truth 
are an absolute illusion, unless man be really a spirit 
and unless God, the universal and eternal source of 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY GF KNOWLEDGE. 91 

all existence, be also, and be known to be, a spirit. 
But, now, if man is a spirit, and if he is the subject 
of spiritual — which are vital, organic, and substantial 
or essential — relations (not dead, mechanical, and 
purely phenomenal or insubstantial ones,) he may be 
expected in some way to be aware or assured of the 
fact. For of what should man have knowledge, if 
not of himself and of that which stands in vital and 
essential relation to himself? And so, indeed, the 
sense, either clear, conscious, and explicit, or, more 
usually, obscure, more or less unconscious, and in- 
explicit, of man's spiritual nature furnishes the inex- 
pugnable and indestructible root, from and upon 
which, in the universal consciousness of mankind, 
religion imperishably thrives. So long as his spirit- 
ual nature is to man not an object of clear, explicit, 
reflective and scientific knowledge, it takes for him 
the less hardy, but scarcely less persistent form of a 
" faith," on which he dares to found all his hopes 
and by which he is more than content to be guided 
in all his conduct. But faith is only inexplicit knowl- 
edge. If it be any thing other than this, it is worse 
than worthless. It is, or it marks, simply the state 
of innocent childhood, but not, for that reason, neces- 
sarily of error in understanding. But the professed 
student of Christian knowledge, he who is studying 
with the openly confessed intention of becoming a 
teacher of others, — he, I say, whatever may be true 
of others, cannot remain unmindful of the Apostolic 
injunction, " Be not children in understanding: . . . 
. . . but in understanding be men" (i Cor. xiv. 20). 



92 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

He must — on penalty, if he do otherwise, of con- 
tradicting the very nature of his intelligence and so 
stultifying himself — seek to have his faith thoroughly 
"rooted in knowledge." And so, if he understands 
himself and his own needs, and means to be thorough 
and complete in the work which lies immediately 
before him, he not unnaturally turns to those^who 
have sought to determine, on grounds of universal 
fact and experience, what knowledge, as such, is, 
what are the limits or what is the range of knowl- 
edge, what is and can be known. He asks, What 
does philosophic, or absolute, unqualified science 
demonstrate respecting the universal nature of know- 
able being ? What is the utmost that it finds in the 
facts of existence ? ' What is its final interpretation 
of the facts of man's conscious experience ? 

And now it is, I say, when the theological student, 
following a requirement which flows immediately and 
necessarily from the peculiar nature of his work, 
comes to put to himself these questions, that he is 
likely to find his way beset with perplexity and dif- 
ficulty. He turns to " science," he turns to " philos- 
ophy," and naturally his first supposition is that he 
will hear the last word of philosophy or of absolute 
science, if he only listens intently to those whose 
names happen to be sounded most frequently and 
with most praise at the present moment. He listens, 
and what does he hear ? He hears that all knowl- 
edge is sensation, or is the mysterious, but purely 
mechanical, result or accompaniment of molecular 
motions; that it is confined, in its ontological range, 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 93 

to sensible phenomena, and extends to naught that 
truly and absolutely is; that, while nothing can be 
known or determined respecting the nature of matter 
per se } or whether there be indeed any matter per se, 
all phenomena, so far as knowable, are in the last 
analysis material in form and can rightly be de- 
scribed only as phenomena of the " redistribution of 
matter and motion;" and that, finally, all knowable 
relations are mechanical, are relations of and in time 
and space as such, and are, accordingly, external 
and extrinsic, not internal and intrinsic, — accidental, 
(or, what is the same thing, fated,) not essential and 
self-determined, — dead, and not living. All this, I 
say, is what the young student, in quest of philo- 
sophic wisdom, is most likely to hear at the first, 
and is sure to hear, if he consults those supposed — 
and at all events, widely accepted — oracles of philo- 
sophic science, who have been enjoying in our day 
the most brilliant and influential notoriety among 
English-speaking peoples. And if, with the historic 
spirit, he follows back the main currents of scientific 
and ostensibly philosophic thought in Great Britain 
to their beginnings, and then follows them again 
from their beginnings down to the present day, he 
finds an unbroken line of ideal continuity connect- 
ing the men of the present with those of the past: 
the Mills and Spencers, the Bains and Leweses of 
to-day are the true intellectual descendants and 
heirs of the Bacons and Hobbeses, the Lockes and 
Humes of the past. The voice of the former, as 
regards philosophical questions, is in reality but 



94 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

an amplified and prolonged echo of the voice of the 
latter. 

Recalling, now, the most general and universal 
presuppositions of his religious faith, viz., that man 
in his true and indestructible nature is a spirit, that 
the Absolute is a Spirit, and is God, and that real, 
spiritual relations unite man to this Absolute Being, 
our inquirer, by a natural necessity, goes on to ask 
those to whom we have imagined him as applying 
for information, " What, then, have you to say about 
spiritual existence ? Is no such existence known or 
knowable ? Does nothing spiritual exist for strict 
science, or as a literal, demonstrable object of knowl- 
edge ? Is there at least no indirect evidence of the 
reality of such existence?" And to the complete 
intellectual discomfiture of faith — just so far, namely, 
as trust is reposed in the knowledge and authority of 
those to whom the foregoing inquiries are supposed 
to be directed — there comes to each of these ques- 
tions a negative answer. Faith approaches the door 
of what she has taken to be the audience-room of 
pure intelligence, only to find herself absolutely 
refused admission. There — such is the apparent 
decree — she is not, and can not and must not 
be, at home. If her objects exist not — or, what 
amounts to precisely the same thing, if there be 
no evidence to intelligence of their existence — how 
shall she justify her own further existence ? What 
is to stand between her and suicide ? Whatever 
the issue in any particular case may be, it is ob- 
vious that it can never be a healthful one for faith, 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 95 

so long as the apparent conflict between it and in- 
telligence remains unremoved. No, the foundations 
of faith must be scientifically justifiable, or else in 
the long run faith must vanish from the earth, per- 
ishing by inanition. For man is a thinking being. 
By his thought he is what he is. 1 By his intelligence 
he is led to do whatever essentially good thing he 
does. Nay, he "believes" only in accordance with 
the real or fancied dictates of his intelligence: he be- 
lieves only because he knows, or thinks he "knows 
what he believes." And now, I have entered upon 
the course of inquiries, which have led us to the 
present point in our discussion, because the schism, 
which British sensationalism and agnosticism tends 
to establish between intelligence and a spiritual faith, 
is falsely and misleadingly regarded and proclaimed 
as the work of pure or "advanced" science and of 
philosophy, and the theological student, above all 
others, needs and has a right to know and to have 
it pointed out to him that this is so. Great Britain 
is an island, and not the whole world. And the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the pres- 
ent era — beyond which, in philosophy, such British 
11 leaders " of to-day as Mr. Spencer have scarcely 
advanced one whit — constitute but an island, and 
that a very barren one, in the history of philosophy. 
Philosophy, as absolute experimental science, as 
the science of the whole and fundamental nature 
and content of man's actual experience, has demon- 
strated and still demonstrates — i. e. y points out, as 
truth of immediate and ever-present, experimental 



96 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

fact — that the spiritual exists and how and as what 
it exists; that the condition of all knowledge what- 
soever is a spiritual process, and that the condition 
of all existence whatsoever is spiritual existence. 
The apparently contrary opinion of so many British 
leaders arises from the circumstance that they do 
not really know what the science of knowledge is, 
or how to study it. For this science they substitute, 
as I have previously pointed out, empirical, descrip- 
tive psychology, for the method of absolute science 
the mathematico-physical method, and for its results 
the highest generalizations of mathematico-physical 
(i. e n sensible, phenomenal) science itself. Such er- 
rors and misconceptions philosophy, with its broader 
vision and more concrete method, wholly repudiates; 
and it is time that philosophy should assert its true 
nature among us and make known and defend its real 
achievements, and that true, spiritual religion — the 
religion which declares that God is a Spirit and that 
there is also a spirit in man, and that man, according 
to his true intention, is a son of God — should reap the 
benefit of such support as philosophy is thus prepared 
to give it. In philosophy, properly understood, re- 
ligion is to seek and find its scientific justification. 

The student of theology, then, has a right and it 
is his duty, to ask whether religion is scientific, is 
philosophical, is in agreement with the results of 
science and philosophy, and, consequently, to inquire 
what science and philosophy, as such, are, what re- 
sults, relevant to the subject-matter of faith, they 
have reached, and how and on what grounds they 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 97 

have reached them. And he is entitled to have the 
path of his inquiry made easy for him, so far as this 
can be done by the explosion of false, though popular, 
notions as to what science and philosophy really 
are, who the true or properly accredited votaries 
and representatives of philosophic science really are, 
and what results have actually been reached by 
them. He is entitled, so far as this is possible, to 
be saved from the danger of wasting precious time 
in searching for the living among the dead, and it. 
has been partly with a view to performing such a 
service, that I have followed the line of discussion, 
which has led us to the point where we now are. But 
more, if religion is a domain, not of pure fancy, error, 
or illusion, but of solid and everlasting truth and 
reality, — if the fact which it presupposes and pro- 
claims is, not in discontinuity, but in continuity with 
the fact which philosophic science, with its strictly 
experimental and unbiased method, discovers and 
declares, — then religion is surely entitled, and theo- 
logical students are entitled, to be assured of the 
fact, and that, too, in the name of science and phi- 
losophy themselves. And this assurance, also, I 
have been seeking to give, — or, rather, I have been 
seeking to provide the basis upon which, in the rest 
of our course, such assurance may be made, in all its 
leading details, doubly sure. 

I desire, now, in the remaining portion of this 
course of lectures, to point out how Christianity, 
as the most spiritual of all religions, is also, and for 
that reason, the most philosophical, and to show, in 



98 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

particular, that Christianity, in its Scriptures, either 
directly contains, or else immediately and obviously 
presupposes, a theory of knowledge and of the ob- 
jects of knowledge — of the Absolute (or God), of 
the finite world, and of man — which is not only con- 
firmed by the results of philosophic inquiry, but also 
has positively contributed, in the most marked way, 
to the enrichment of philosophic science itself. 

That Christianity is the most spiritual of all relig- 
ions, — and this by universal confession, — we may 
safely take for granted. Wherein the concrete and 
intrinsic evidence of this consists, we shall have 
abundant occasion to see, as we proceed with our 
examination of its fundamental doctrines. It may, 
even at the risk of repetition and anticipation, be more 
to our purpose to say a word here as to the difference 
between religion and philosophy, and more especially 
as to how philosophy conceives and defines religion 
and, so, by what standard she judges of the worth 
or perfection of different religions, or, rather, forms 
of religion. 

It has no significance, or, at all events, no inter- 
est, to speak of the difference of things, which are 
not at the same time in some way specially related. 
Since, by way of very familiar example, there is no 
special relation between a hat and an umbrella, it is of 
no scientific interest to attempt to define the " differ- 
ence " between them. But religion and philosophy 
disclose a peculiar relation subsisting between them- 
selves. They belong, we may say, to the same genus 
and hence each is distinguished from the other by 



THE BIBLTCAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 99 

an important and scientifically relevant specific dif- 
ference. Both of them are works or functions of 
spirit, and of intelligence, as such. The fundamen- 
tal condition and the final and highest end, result, 
or work of intelligence is, in different senses, self- 
consciousness. We have seen, namely, how the 
scientific examination of the nature and process of 
knowledge discloses, as the condition of knowledge 
in its lowest and simplest form (the form of mechan- 
ically-conditioned sensation), the formal presence and 
activity of self-consciousness. Here self-conscious- 
ness seems to be purely and only formal. It does 
not yet recognize and possess the content, with which 
it is filled, as peculiarly and explicitly its own. The 
content or matter of consciousness appears as some- 
thing foreign to the self. But the final and highest 
end, result, or work of intelligence, on the other 
hand, consists, as we have also seen, in the discov- 
ery, and detailed demonstration of the fact that the 
whole realm of intelligence and, consequently, of 
reality is but the manifestation or realization of uni- 
versal Self, or Absolute Spirit, so that all reality is, 
directly or indirectly, the reality of a Self, or is spirit- 
ual reality, and all intelligence is in like manner 
self-intelligence. Human intelligence realizes its 
full nature, when it recognizes itself as organically 
one, on its universal and fundamental side, with the 
Absolute Intelligence, so that its truest knowledge 
of itself is the knowledge which it has of itself as 
thus dependently one with God, and of all things 
as, through God, organically one with and in this sense 



100 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

a part of itself. Philosophy, now, is the explicit, re- 
flective, scientific demonstration of this relation of 
finite to the Absolute Intelligence and of finite forms 
of being to the Absolute Being. Or, philosophy is 
in kind and in ideal, the realization of absolute self- 
consciousness and so the apprehension of absolute 
reality, in the form of pure thought. Religion, on 
the other hand, substantially considered, is the real- 
ization of the same thing — i. e., the realization of 
man's true nature as organically, but dependently, 
one with the Absolute, or God — not simply, or even 
predominantly, in the form of pure cognition, but in 
every form of actuality, or in one's whole, and actual, 
and living being. Religion, thus concretely viewed, 
pre-eminently is — or, since ''being is doing," it ac- 
tively realizes and exhibits — the truth which phi- 
losophy reflectively recognizes and demonstrates. 
Religion is organic unity with God — in heart, in 
will, in conscious thought, and in life. 

Considered more abstractly and superficially, or 
with reference to the images and stories, the rites 
and usages, in which for thought and imagination its 
substance is usually bodied forth, religion is in form 
a non-scientific representation (through the afore- 
said means) of the substantial truth of things — of 
man, the world, and their relation to the Absolute, 
— in accordance with that stage of intelligence and, 
more especially, of religious life or of normally de- 
veloped and perfected humanity, which its highest 
representatives have reached or been able to recog- 
nize. It is especially noteworthy that the Christian 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 101 

religion finds its first and fundamental expression, 
for all those who have lived and shall yet live after 
the death of its founder, in the simple story of a per- 
fect life — a life of perfect union with God, the Abso- 
lute Spirit. Religion, then, in its various " scriptures," 
deals primarily, not in definitions, but in images and 
narratives. It is the work of an abstract or, as it 
is called, " dogmatic " theology, to define the truth 
which the images and narratives contain. Hence 
the fact that theology always tends to assume the 
form of a philosophy, — for philosophy is definition; 
it is the definite recognition, namely, and demonstra- 
tion of truth. 

Philosophy, then, recognizes that religion, sub- 
stantially considered, as most perfect, in which the 
spiritual, substantial, vital, all-pervading union of 
man with the personal, spiritual Absolute is most 
perfectly realized — and realized through the uncon- 
ditioned love, the unfaltering and energetic will, the 
clear intelligence, and the beautiful life of the indi- 
vidual. And that religion, formally considered, or 
viewed with regard to its symbolic expression, is, 
for philosophy, most perfect, in which the corre- 
sponding truth is most perfectly and distinctly sym- 
bolized. That, judged by these standards, Christian- 
ity stands at the head of all religions, as the one 
absolute and perfect religion, to which all others 
are related as relative and imperfect ones — this 
is a truth to which philosophy has borne willing 
witness. 

With a view, now, to examining whether this wit- 



102 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ness is indeed true, let us first briefly consider, in the 
remaining portion of this lecture, that theory of knowl- 
edge, which is directly implied in the theory of the 
Christian life, as portrayed in the Christian Scrip- 
tures; — reserving for subsequent lectures the con- 
sideration of Christianity on its other philosophico- 
scientific sides, as a theory of the grand objects of 
knowledge — of man, the world, the Absolute, or God, 
and their mutual relations. 

That the Scriptures represent the Christian life as 
most intimately — nay, indissolubly — bound up with 
a knowledge of some sort, no one of course, who looks 
at the subject even in the most superficial way, can 
for a moment doubt or deny. He who is the Alpha 
and the Omega of this life to all those who share in 
it, declares concerning himself, " I am the Way," — 
the " Way," that is to say, obviously, for living, in- 
telligent men, not for unconscious automata or ma- 
chines; the " Way" for those who can perceive and 
know it and who, by an intelligent and sustained 
exertion of will, have the power to adopt it and to 
persevere in it. " I am," he says further, "the Truth." 
But truth is nothing out of relation to intelligence. 
Only through intelligence can it be possessed, and 
possess it we must — we must share in, or "be par- 
takers of" Christ, "the Truth" — if we would enjoy 
that " Life," which, in the very next words, Christ 
goes on to say that he is. The truth which Christ 
professes to "be," is the absolute truth, the truth 
without qualification, the truth concerning the Ab- 
solute, the truth of God and of all things as existing 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 103 

and explicable only through him. It is the truth, 
the knowledge of which is the condition of our "lib- 
erty," our freedom— and true freedom is by no means 
a purely mechanical condition, as when we say of 
water, for example, that it is " free," if unobstructed, 
to run down hill, but is something far higher; it is a 
spiritual condition, or, better, activity, which can be 
realized only through intelligence. And so, too, fi- 
nally, the knowledge of the same truth, the knowledge 
of God, is said to be eternal life, — not simply the 
condition of such life, but identical with it. The life 
in question — please observe — in being termed "eter- 
nal," is not designated as simply a life to come, a fu- 
ture life, a life which may yet be, but has nothing to 
do with the present. No, the eternal is an ever- 
lasting Now; in it there is no distinction of past, pres- 
ent, and future; in this sense it is superior to time. 
Time is the emblem and the condition of mutability, 
of change, ofimpermanence, so that everything which 
is, as such, subject to the condition of time, has for its 
law that it shall "pass away." Thus whatever is 
characteristically subject to the condition of time, is 
pro tanto unreal, insubstantial, purely phenomenal, 
and man, so far as he is subject to this condition, is 
without true and abiding reality. It is only through 
his participation in an eternal life, that he has in him 
true substance or reality; and so it is — if the Scrip- 
tures are to be believed, only through the knowledge 
of God, more especially as presently and eternally 
revealed to the human spirit in the spiritual person 
of Jesus Christ, that man ever truly is himself. Mani- 



104 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

festly, Christian knowledge, whatever this may prove 
to be, is a most important thing in the theory of the 
Christian life. The latter is represented as being a 
life through growth in the knowledge of Jesus Christ 
and of the Eternal Spirit whom he, not merely ver- 
bally, but actually, livingly, spiritually, reveals. It 
is a life of sanctification — not through error, nor 
through ignorance, nor through indifference to the 
truth, nor, again, through a mock humility which ag- 
nostically renounces the knowledge of the truth, on 
the plea that such knowledge is too wonderful and 
exalted for the finite vessels of our intelligence and 
would, if once attained, be sure to work rather our 
ruin, than our everlasting salvation; no, it is no such 
sanctification as that; it is sanctification through the 
truth, through a partaking of the Holy Ghost, the 
Spirit of truth, who leads, not away from, but into 
"all truth"; — the Spirit who inspires, not a dread or 
a despair of the truth, but the love of it, and the con- 
fident hope — nay, more, the assured knowledge — of 
possessing it. And of its promised pastors — the pas- 
tors according to Jehovah's heart — it is declared, that 
they shall feed their flock " with knowledge and un- 
derstanding" (Jer. iii. 15). 

Finally, St. Paul, "rude in speech, yet not in knowl- 
edge," confessed to a "great conflict" or agony of 
prayerful desire, that the Colossian disciples might 
attain to "the full assurance of understanding," i. e., 
to that completeness of assurance which under- 
standing alone can give, so as to know the very 
" mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 105 

in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge" (Col. ii. 2, 3). 

We remark, now, first, that, notwithstanding all 
this insistence on the dignity, value, and indispensa- 
bleness of knowledge, there is yet recognized by 
Scripture a kind of knowledge, which is essentially 
vain, and which, accordingly, instead of building up, 
only "puffeth up." It brings, not the fulness of true, 
solid, spiritual substance, but only essential empti- 
ness. This knowledge is that which has the appear- 
ance of being purely, as indeed it is primarily, indi- 
vidual. It is the knowledge of the " natural man," 
of man the sensible individual, in the intellectually 
and morally untutored condition, in which he is by 
physical nature launched into the existence of space 
and time. Its vanity and imperfection are declared 
by one of Job's questionable " comforters," who says 
roundly, "We are but of yesterday and know noth- 
ing, because our days upon earth are a shadow" 
(Job viii. 9). It is not knowledge per se, not knowl- 
edge without qualification, not absolute, substantial 
knowledge, but knowledge viewed in that aspect of it, 
whereby it is, as such, limited and determined by the 
conditions of space and time. It is the " form of 
knowledge " only, severed from the absolute content 
or substance. It is relative, phenomenal. It has 
for its immediate and only object that, whose very 
nature is, not to be, but to change and to pass 
away. It is a knowledge, therefore, which "cometh 
to nought"; — it "cometh to nought," namely, when 
it is either in practice or in theory treated as the all 



106 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

in all of knowledge. Its theoretical end is (as we 
noted in our first lecture) the familiar spectre — and 
idol — of " agnosticism." And its practical end is, not 
the much-vaunted "lesson "of intellectual modesty on 
man's part, but the blasphemous imputation to God, 
the Absolute One, of its own limitations, saying, 
(Job xxii. 13), " How doth God know? can he judge 
through the dark cloud?" As though all knowledge 
were, as such, wholly an affair of sensible percep- 
tion and consequently subject to the limiting con- 
ditions of such perception, rather than — as is indeed 
the case — mistress of them. As though "sensible af- 
fection " were the imperiously determining and con- 
ditioning principle, and not rather, merely an instru- 
ment of intelligence, and that for the absolute and 
perfect intelligence of the Almighty and Universal 
One — the " all in all " — as well as for the inchoate and 
undeveloped quasi-intelligence of the "natural man," 
or, the purely sensitive individual! And as though 
" the dark cloud," or any other purely sensible phe- 
nomenon, were an outermost or absolute boundary 
for intelligence — be that intelligence termed either 
"human" or "divine" — and not, rather, as it were, 
a mere stake, set, whether casually or necessarily, 
within the field of intelligence by intelligence itself. 
And yet the Christian Scriptures do not pass, with 
reference to sensible knowledge and its objects, to 
that exaggerated extreme of abstraction and denial, 
which is illustrated in the Phenomenalism of Hindu 
religious philosophy. It is not that sensible knowl- 
edge and sensible existence are an unqualified il- 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 107 

lusion, or that, rightly understood, they are any il- 
lusion at all. The realm of such knowledge and of 
such existence is indeed a realm of " appearance," 
as distinguished from absolute and independent re- 
ality, but it is not therefore one of inherently false 
appearance. "The things which are seen were not 
made of things which do appear" (Heb. xi. 3). 
But it does not thence follow that they were not 
" made " at all, and hence that they have no sort of 
real existence whatever. It follows simply that 
they were " made " by, or have the necessary ground 
of their existence in, that which does not appear. 
The apparent has the root of its existence in the 
sub-apparent, the sensible in the non-sensible and 
intelligible, the mechanical in the organic and spir- 
itual, the dead in the living. " The worlds were 
framed by the Word of God" (Heb. xi. 3), which 
" Word," as Reason, Life, Power, and personal Spir- 
it, is to " the worlds," not merely as a " First Cause" 
in point of time, but as the everlasting, everrpresent, 
ever-active, living principle of their existence and of 
their reality. If the worlds are to be designated as 
"appearance," it is the divine Word that appears in 
them. Their very nature is this, namely, to be the 
appearance of the divine, the absolute, word, reason, 
power, spirit, purpose. As their existence is de- 
pendent, it is thus also instrumental. It is the me- 
chanism for the accomplishment of a divine purpose, 
the manifestation of the divine word or nature — i. e, f 
the manifestation of absolute being — which latter, 
accordingly, the Scriptures declare that t^ey in fact 



108 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

declare. The sensible heavens declare the glory of 
God (Ps. xix. i). Their very existence is a ''lan- 
guage" or "voice," so that "there is no speech or 
language, where their voice is not heard" (Ps. xix. 3). 
"For the invisible things of him [God] from [and 
including] the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being understood by the things that are made, 
even his eternal power and Godhead" (Rom. i. 20). 
Evidently, any criticism which the Scriptures pass 
upon sensible knowledge, is directed to it only as 
understood in that superficial sense in which it is 
understood by a purely sensational theory of knowl- 
edge, where, in the phrase, " sensible knowledge," 
all stress is laid upon the epithet " sensible," and 
the word "knowledge" is kept as much as possible 
out of sight and thought and, for the rest, is left 
almost wholly uncomprehended. If sensible knowl- 
edge means simply immediate sensible perception — 
the immediate consciousness, the mere "being 
aware," of a sensible affection as a present fact of 
individual experience, and nothing more — then, as 
Bildad the Shuhite said, in agreement with the 
sensational Agnostics of to-day, "we know [in the 
absolute sense] nothing;" our "wisdom" comes fi- 
nally to nought; and this the Scriptures, confirming 
the voice of philosophy, declare. But the Scriptures 
also perceive, and, in the passage from Romans 
above cited, plainly indicate, that sensible KNOWL- 
EDGE is something more than mere sensible per- 
ception; that the world of sensible consciousness is 
not known through the mere fact of our being sensi- 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 109 

bly conscious of it, but through an active process of 
intelligence, to which the data of sense serve simply 
as that which they are, namely, data in a problem 
which can be solved only by going beyond the data, 
but to the true solution of which the data them- 
selves, when truly apprehended, directly point. 

But perhaps we are approaching too near to an 
anticipation of our conclusion, or of discussions which 
are announced to follow in a subsequent lecture. 
One of the defects of purely sensible knowledge is 
that it is, at least in form and appearance, exclu- 
sively individual. But purely individual knowledge, 
as the science of the subject shows, is, as such, an 
absurdity and an impossibility. Of this truth, too, 
the Scriptures would seem, to manifest the most 
positive and explicit consciousness. Saint Paul's 
declarations to this effect are especially pointed. 
" I know nothing by myself," he says (i Cor. iv. 4). 
And again, "If any [individual} man thinks that he 
[as individual, purely] knoweth any thing, he know- 
eth nothing yet as he ought to know" (lb. viii. 2). 
And still again, with even greater explicitness, he 
declares that we are not " sufficient of ourselves to 
think any thing as of ourselves " (2 Cor. iii. 5). How 
"truly these words are spoken — judged from the point 
of view of the science of knowledge — our previous 
discussions will, I trust, amply have prepared us to 
perceive. But does it then follow that we have no 
"sufficiency" or ability to " think" and to know at 
all? By no means; for the obvious fact is that we 
do think and know, in one fashion or another, and 



110 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

that it is only in consequence of this fact that we as 
self-conscious intelligences, exist at all. No, it is 
not that we have no sufficiency to think at all, but 
simply that it is important for us to recognize 
wherein that sufficiency really consists, and where- 
on it is truly founded. " Our sufficiency is of God " 
(2 Cor. iii. 5; see also 1 Cor. ii. 10-12). True knowl- 
edge, knowledge in the absolute sense, knowledge 
proper, is a spiritual process. It is possible for man 
only because and in so far as he is a spirit. " There 
is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Al- 
mighty giveth them understanding " (Job xxxii. 8). 
Were there no spirit in man, there were no under- 
standing; and were there no inspiration of the Al- 
mighty, there were also no understanding. " The 
spirit of man is the candle of the Lord " (Prov. xx. 
27). The individual man, through his spiritual na- 
ture, is essentially connected with and dependent on 
the Universal and Absolute, and in his intelligence, 
which is a spiritual process, this connection and de- 
pendence is consciously reflected, and is spoken of, 
in language which philosophic science also employs, 
as " a light." The light of our so-called individual 
— the rather, of our personal — intelligence is not 
self-lighted. It is not the light of the individual as 
such; it is, as the philosophy of knowledge has 
always perceived and declared, the light of the 
universal: science, knowledge as such, is only of and 
through or by the universal; — this we have found 
philosophy asserting ever since the day when, with 
Plato and Aristotle, scientific reflection concerning 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. Ill 

the subject began. But the universal, in the cate- 
gory of living reality, is, when carried to its final 
issues, or probed to its deepest foundations, nothing 
other than Absolute Spirit, or God. Here, then, in 
the realm of intelligence, is proved true, that which 
is declared by the Christian master: " He that findeth 
his [individual] life shall lose it; and he that loseth 
his life shall find it" (Matt. x. 39). "Our" life, as pure 
individuals, in the matter of intelligence, as in other 
weighty respects, is nought. To "find" it, is to find 
nothing, and less than nothing. Our intelligence is 
in proportion to its genuineness, not ours alone, but 
that of the universal, of God. 2 

The individual spirit of man, therefore, is, in re- 
spect of its intelligence — and without the function 
of intelligence it is no real spirit — a lighted "candle 
of the Lord." "The Lord giveth wisdom," even to 
them who consciously know it not. 3 Who, that is 
acquainted with the course of philosophic inquiry, is 
not reminded of Aristotle's declaration, that the 
" active reason " of man — the very root and basis 
and presupposition of all his intelligence, the func- 
tional condition of all knowledge of the universal, 
i. e. y of all true science — is "something divine," or is 
of divine origin, and may be symbolically described 
as entering into us, as individuals , or quasi-individ- 
uals, from without, "as through a door?" And who 
does not involuntarily recall how the post-Kantian 
inquiry, in the history of German philosophy, taking 
its immediate, historic cue from Kant, (who had de- 
monstrated anew that all knowledge is the depend- 



112 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY, 

ent result of what we must term a distinctively spirit- 
ual process,) but, above all, and more especially, being 
guided to its conclusions by the nature of the case it- 
self, as revealed to experimental inquiry, was brought 
directly to recognize the fact that knowledge, as an 
affair (to first appearance) of purely individual origin 
and nature, (or of the "individual ego") was wholly in- 
explicable without reference to an "Absolute Ego," 
which indeed transcends the individual ego, but in 
and through which alone the intelligence of the 
latter "lives, and moves, and has its being?" Nay, 
more, to what but to the necessity of recognizing 
some such truth as the one we are now contemplat- 
ing does the mechanistic evolution-philosophy of our 
day point. In this "philosophy" it is Evolution that 
stands, practically, for the Absolute. For Evolution 
is conceived as the law and process which determines 
all (knowable) existence. It is not regarded as the 
law or fancy of the individual subject of knowledge, 
merely; it is viewed as the law of the universal and 
final Object of Knowledge. And what is the "phi- 
losophy of evolution" but the Absolute, as thus poorly 
conceived, thinking itself, as it were, in and through 
the individual, and becoming thus not only the prin- 
ciple of the individual's knowledge of it (the " Abso- 
lute"), but also of the true knowledge and explana- 
tion of himself and of all things as determined by 
and according to it? And if evolution-philosophy 
stops short with the recognition of such an " Abso- 
lute" (and thus suggests a conception of knowledge 
which is so essentially pantheistic), we have already 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 113 

learned that the reason for this is to be found, not 
in the intrinsic limitations of human intelligence, as 
such, but in the limitations with which the evolu- 
tion-philosopher voluntarily and arbitrarily surrounds 
his own particular intelligence. 

The knowledge, then, which the theory of the Chris- 
tian life, as expressed in Scripture, implies and re- 
quires, is " spiritual knowledge." It is a knowledge 
which the individual possesses, not as mere individ- 
ual, but only by virtue of his organic, living connec- 
tion with the universal and absolute. It is a knowl- 
edge, which, in form and kind, corresponds perfectly to 
the definition — universally accepted, either expressly 
or implicitly — of scientific knowledge. It is not, as is 
too often supposed, something absolutely sui generis , 
inexplicable, miraculous, and without scientific rhyme 
or reason. No, it is not discredited by the science 
of knowledge. The rather, it is the living, practi- 
cal fulfilment of knowledge, according to the ideal 
requirements and presuppositions of such science. 
" The practical fulfilment," I say, just as we might 
say that breathing, digesting, and all other physio- 
logical processes, as actually carried on in the human 
body, are carried on in "practical fulfilment" of the 
"presuppositions and requirements" of physiologi- 
cal science, just as well in the case of those who are 
wholly ignorant of physiological theory, as in the 
case of the accomplished physiologist himself. The 
functions of the human spirit may proceed normally 
and accomplish their due result in the practical knowl- 
edge and possession of the truth, and of eternal life 



114 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

through such knowledge, even in the absence of 
explicit knowledge (scientific information) respect- 
ing" the process of its own intelligence. But this 
does not prove that religious disciples, and, above 
all, religious teachers, can afford to slight or to un- 
dervalue the benefits of such scientific information. 
For although, without it the truth may be lived, felt, 
and even correctly spoken, yet, being unable to give 
a rational account of itself, it is, as history is ever 
showing, thus rendered liable to wander in all sorts 
of devious and unwholesome ways, and, above all, is 
unable to defend itself before that very forum of intel- 
ligence, before which, by virtue of its very nature, as 
an ostensible function of intelligence, science is with 
justice ever citing it to appear. Religion is robust 
and really mistress of itself, only when it is " always 
ready to give an answer to every man that asketh 
a reason of the hope" that it inspires. 
. The Christian life is, according to the Scriptural 
theory, a "partaking of the divine nature." Our 
examination of the Scriptural theory of knowledge 
shows, in particular, that Christian knowledge — the 
true knowledge — is held to be realized only through 
a participation in the divine, the absolute, intelli- 
gence, and that this claim of Christianity is in no 
sense unscientific. We only remark, in this con- 
nection, that the theory and the facts in question 
bring vividly before us the truth, at once religious 
and philosophical, that God is a being " near at 
hand, and not afar off" (Jer. xxiii. 23), and that 
the more human thought realizes its true nature, 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 115 

becomes true to itself, or is indeed true thought, 
the more distinctly does it recognize the literal fact 
that all its works are " begun, continued, and ended" 
— not in a mechanical and pantheistic process of evo- 
lution, merely, but — in God. Just as, universally, 
the intelligent ''service" of God is "perfect free- 
dom," so, in particular, the thought which is begun, 
continued, and ended in God is the only perfectly 
"free thought." It rests on and is filled with the 
absolute substance of thought. What is often termed 
" free thought," is free only in this secondary and 
insubstantial sense, that it is contingent. But con- 
tingency is not the element in which true freedom 
lives or can live. Its service is essential bondage. 
The contingent is the incalculable, and that thought 
which is at its mercy, is free only in name. No 
wonder that its final issue is, and has always been, 
not the free and masterly assurance of knowledge, 
but scepticism, or agnosticism. " Free thought," 
thus miscalled, is thought remaining at that point 
of view which — according to the distinction rightly 
made by Hegel — distinguishes the "religions of na- 
ture" from spiritual or absolute (and, in particular, 
from the Christian) religion. It is that point of 
view which separates mere agnostic sensationalism 
from philosophy. It is the point of view of " con- 
sciousness," as distinguished from " self-conscious- 
ness." It is that point of view, from which the 
knowing subject appears as a purely individual agent, 
(or recipient, rather), set over against an indefinite 
aggregate of objects, called a "world," and between 



116 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

which and the knowing subject none other than 
superficial mechanical relations either do or can 
exist, — so that knowledge is and can only be con- 
ceived as the purely mechanical result of contingent 
impressions. Here one man's impressions are as 
good as another's, i. e., they are good for nothing, as 
keys to absolute knowledge. From this point of view, 
the farthest that one can or ever does get, in the 
way of an absolute, objective, conviction, is to the 
belief — subject to the caprices of " argument " — that 
there is somewhere "a God," not to the present 
knowledge of him. A "First Cause" existing be- 
fore the world, and now remaining afar off from it, 
is postulated or conceded," but all knowledge of 
him is regarded as a matter of indirect and more or 
less credible information, or of " argument," and not 
of immediate and necessary intelligence. Or if, as 
in the conceptions current in the religions of nature, 
God is thought of as standing in any sort of present 
relation to men, he is regarded merely as one brutely 
possessing all power, so that he may, if he will, me- 
chanically adjust circumstances in the world in a 
manner to conform to our desires, i. e., so as to secure 
for us the reception of a pleasant series of impressions 
from the objects that surround us and from the sit- 
uations in which we may be placed. At this stage 
of thought, which survives so widely to-day, the 
spiritual foundation of all existence and of all knowl- 
edge is not known, and consequently God, as the 
Absolute Spirit, by whom and through whom are 
all things, who keeps no holiday, but "worketh 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 117 

hitherto" and still works, — God, who is not far re- 
moved from any one of us, but is absolutely near, — 
God, in the true and literal, present and everlasting 
knowledge of whom " standeth our eternal life," — 
is not known: He is worshipped, if at all, only in 
name, not in Spirit and in intelligent and everlast- 
ing possession of the truth. And above all, the 
truly ethical element is banished from the concep- 
tion of him and of his relation to the world. For 
all really ethical relations are spiritual and only 
spiritual. Man is a moral being only because he 
is a spirit; and hence those ostensible " moral sys- 
tems," which take no account of man in his spir- 
itual nature, but regard him purely as a so-called 
"natural being" or mere physical and psychical 
automaton, are easily, and have often been in fact, 
convicted of being "moral systems" only in name. 
And so, too, it is only when God is truly known as 
an Omnipresent Spirit, that he becomes, for human 
conception and praxis, a moral being, so that man 
can be conscious of moral and truly religious rela- 
tions as binding him to God and can see in God a 
true, i. e. y a moral, Governor of the universe, and not 
simply, as pure mechanism would require, a mere, 
irresponsible tyrant (in the Greek sense of this 
term). So fundamental and far-reaching are the 
interests which are bound up in the Christian the- 
ory of knowledge, or indeed, as we may well and 
truthfully say, in the theory of knowledge, taken 
without any qualifying epithet. 

It remains only for us to say a word respecting the 



118 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

connection of the results which we have reached 
with the conception of " revelation." 

And first we remark, that from the point of view 
of the mere individual, all true knowledge, all genuine 
science, is of the nature of revelation. And first 
this revelation has the appearance of being purely 
mechanical. The object of knowledge first has the 
air of being mechanically brought or shown to the 
knowing agent. It does not appear to belong to 
him as his own, or as a part of himself. It does not 
seem to lie within the territory which is covered by 
his proper self. It does not appear to him as some- 
thing which it is a part of his very nature to know, 
and not knowing which he were something less than 
's own complete and proper self. It seems to be 
mechanically revealed to him, as by special but in- 
scrutable grace, and as from without. But we now 
know, on the authority of philosophic science, as 
well as of religion, that all this is so only in appear- 
ance. We know that a revelation, purely on the 
terms and in the form just mentioned, is an impos- 
sibility; for no knowledge whatsoever is possible 
on purely mechanical conditions. The Scriptures, 
therefore, when received in a purely mechanical way, 
are no revelation. They are then simply a dead 
letter, which kills, instead of enlivening and quick- 
ening, intelligence. The only authority which such 
a " revelation" possesses is that of accidental might, 
but not of real and effective, because recognized or 
recognizable right. 4 It may be accepted through 
fear, but it may also, as daily observation informs 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 119 

us only too well, be rejected and shaken off through 
arbitrary and capricious wilfulness. No, the me- 
chanical reception and possession of the Scriptures 
is only the first and necessary precondition to the 
further reception of them with the eyes of an opened 
"understanding" (Luke xxiv. 45), so that they may 
become to us truly a word of life. 

But again, our studies have further informed us 
that, in the view both of philosophic science and of 
Scripture, all " understanding" or knowledge proper 
is of the nature of revelation in another and truer 
sense. It is of the nature of self-revelation. And 
here we may lay it down as an axiomatic truth for 
all intelligence, — whether the latter be termed "re- 
ligious " or " philosophical," — that all genuine, or 
complete and effective, revelation is, in form and kind, 
self-revelation. For it must have the form and be 
submitted to the nature of self-consciousness. 5 Rev- 
elation is of the same nature or genus as intelligence 
itself. If philosophy means simply being everywhere 
— in all fields of intelligence or of the "objects" of 
intelligence — "at home," so that in all one's true 
knowledge one knows only one's own (larger) self, 
and in all one's findings finds only that same Self, 
religious "revelation" means the same thing. The 
"larger self," it will be remembered, is divine, and 
is graciously bestowed on man as the precondition 
of his true existence, as well as of his intelligence. 
We truly are, and we truly know, only as we be- 
come "partakers of the divine nature." If, there- 
fore, it is the voice of God which is heard in the 



120 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

word divine, it is also, and for that very reason, also 
the voice of man, — the voice of man, namely, accord- 
ing to his true nature and intent; of man as he is at 
once revealed to himself and as God also is revealed 
to or set before him, not in an abstraction, but in 
the living, spiritual person of the Incarnate Word, 
the Son of God and Son of Man in one, — or, finally, 
of man in his — not individual, but--personal or or- 
ganic union with God, the Absolute. 6 And as the 
bond of organic union for spiritual personalities is 
and can be nothing other than Love, the voice is 
the voice of love and the effective hearing of it is 
conditioned by love. 7 

From all this it follows that the true revelation 
does not fundamentally consist in the communica- 
tion of dates and figures or of any other sort of purely 
historic information. It may be given through these, 
but is in no sense merely identical with them. It is a 
revelation by, of, and to the spirit, and can be only 
spiritually discerned. Its proper content is the ab- 
solute and not the relative. 

It follows, further, that the content of revelation 
can be nothing which is essentially out of relation 
to intelligence. It must be of, from, and for the 
world of intelligence as such. In this sense it can- 
not be essentially "mysterious." To the "natural 
man " it may indeed be mysterious. To the sensa- 
tional agnostic it not only may be, but is confess- 
edly, mysterious, and for that reason incredible. 
But so also, to him, all philosophy proper, all ab- 
solute truth, as well as all absolute religion, is a 



THE BIBLICAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 121 

mystery and theoretically incredible. But it is not 
of such that we now speak. We say only that for 
the true and proper man, for him who has reached 
the stature of real, and not merely nominal, spectral, 
manhood — in other words, for him who has become 
and is a true spiritual being in fact as well as in 
name — -for him, and for his intelligence, be the latter 
called philosophic or religious, no truth is or can be 
essentially mysterious, and none can be revealed as 
such. It may not, in all its details, be completely 
apprehended, but it must in its substance be com- 
prehended. 8 Intelligence must find its own larger 
lineaments reflected in its every dogma. Truths 
which, as ostensibly absolute and of the absolute, 
are therefore truths which are of the very essence 
of reason and of reality, cannot be revealed, as they 
cannot be known, except as in harmony with both 
reason and reality and as throwing an illuminating 
light on both. Absolute truths must be all-explain- 
ing and all-illuminating. They must really enlighten, 
and not simply mystify, intelligence. 

That, now, with these explanations, it should be 
possible and conceivable that through the mouths 
of holy men truths have been spoken, which they, 
of their individual selves were incompetent to know 
and to speak, and that the knowledge or inspiration 
by virtue of which they did this was a knowledge 
and inspiration from the Most High, all this we may 
readily and gratefully admit and can now, as I trust, 
without too great difficulty understand. 



LECTURE V. 

BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE ABSOLUTE. 

" Denn das Leben ist die Liebe, 
Und des Lebens Leben Geist." — Goethe. 

r I ''HE Absolute is everywhere. It is strictly con 
■*• tinuous or co-extensive with all existence. To 
treat of it exhaustively were, therefore, in one sense, 
the same as to treat of omne scibile. 

The Absolute, I say, is omnipresent. This is the 
doctrine of religion as well as of philosophy. "Whither 
shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from 
thy presence? " (Psalm cxxxix. 7.) And the Psalm- 
ist who puts these questions immediately answers 
them in language which indicates that the omnipres- 
ence of God is not simply a mechanical, external 
presence, without influence upon that to which he is 
present, but that it is a presence in effective power 
and reality. It is a presence to "lead" and to up- 
hold. 

No superstition — I use the word advisedly — no su- 
perstition is, from the point of view of absolute sci- 
ence, more groundless, and yet none is, in our day, 
and among those who lay claim to a certain degree 
of scientific illumination, more common, than that 
which finds expression in the theoretical or practical 
(122) 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 123 

treatment of sensible " nature " and of her supposed 
"blind forces" as if they were complete and inde- 
pendent in themselves; so that, if there be aught 
which is more absolute than they, it must neverthe- 
less find in them a foreign and limiting and resistant 
obstacle, and not, rather, a connatural and pliant 
servant. The true Absolute, or God, is thus viewed 
as not at home in the universe. Here he has no longer 
power or right. Or, if the contrary is still admitted, 
the power is a foreign one and the right is, accord- 
ingly, one of purely arbitrary and extrinsic might. 
It is a right only in name, for in pure might there is 
no intrinsic right. This view has for centuries had, 
and still has, a considerable — and pernicious — cur- 
rency in certain strata of the nominally Christian 
world. The basis for its scientific refutation has, if 
I mistake not, been furnished, in general terms, in a 
preceding lecture. We shall have more to say con- 
cerning it in the following one, for which place we 
also reserve the not difficult task of showing that 
the Christian religion repudiates it. 

Nature is not foreign to the Absolute. It has its 
very life and being in and by it. The Absolute is 
present in nature, and if you would know what the 
Absolute is, you may, if you choose, look for it, and 
study it, and find it in nature. But not in its com- 
pleteness and purity. For the Absolute is not ab- 
sorbed in nature. Nature, on its most characteristic 
side, is an "other" than the Absolute, although it is 
its " other." If it points to, and even, to the eye of 
a true and patient intelligence, presently reveals the 



124 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Absolute, yet it, as such, is not the Absolute. If 
the omnipresent root of its being- and of its reality is 
the Absolute, yet it is not itself that root. Or if, 
again, in the language of Scripture, God " filleth all 
things," yet it does not thence follow that all things 
are God. To-night then, in dealing with "The Ab- 
solute," we wish to fix attention on the Absolute 
not so much in the aspect of its oneness with nature, 
as in its separation and distinction therefrom. We 
desire to fix attention, in other words, on that which 
1 fills," rather than on that which is filled. 

Philosophic science, as we have seen, finds the 
Absolute disclosed, not to mechanical sense, but to 
spiritual intelligence. Its nature and reality are 
known through the ever-present witness which it 
bears of itself to and in the living - , intelligent spirit 
of man. Such witness nought but spirit can give, 
and, on the other hand, nought but the witness of a 
spirit can the human spirit truly receive. Philosophy, 
therefore, as the expression of absolute or pure in- 
telligence, finds, knows, and declares that the Abso- 
lute is Spirit, and is God. This we have already seen, 
and we have also seen in somewhat general terms 
what it is to be a spirit, at least on the side of intel- 
ligence or pure cognition. We have now to see what 
God, as the Absolute, and a Spirit, is for the Chris- 
tian religion, and may hope, as we proceed, to find 
occasion to render our ideas concerning the spiritual 
nature still more explicit. 

No multiplication of texts is necessary to prove 
that for the Bible the Absolute is God, and a Spirit. 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 125 

" I am the first and I am the last," says the " King 
of Israel," speaking by the mouth of the prophet 
Isaiah (xliv. 6). The "heaven of heavens" cannot 
contain him. He is not bounded by time and 
space. The rather, he is himself their boundary 
and their condition. And so, as we have seen, one 
of the most solid, as well as one of the most impor- 
tant of the achievements of philosophy — and espe- 
cially of modern philosophy — has been the demon- 
stration of what is termed the " ideality of space and 
time," or the truth that space and time are, not lim- 
iting preconditions of spirit and of absolute being, 
but dependent functions thereof. And this demon- 
stration — accompanied by the recognition of space 
and time as the peculiar and determining conditions 
of sensible phenomena, as such, — discloses itself at 
once as but an organic part of the demonstration, 
which was carried so far in ancient philosophy, to 
the effect that the sensible universally is but as the 
voice or language, or is the partial manifestation or 
actualization, of the intelligible; so that the sensible 
consists by the intelligible and spiritual, and not vice 
versa, while, on the other hand, the intelligible and 
spiritual exists in or fills the sensible, but is not 
wholly absorbed in it. 

He who is the creative condition of space and 
time, must bear a like relation to all conceivable man- 
ifestations of power or force in the sensible universe. 
These manifestations take the form of motions, and 
motion is an ideal resultant of space and time. In- 
deed, it is only in and through motion that space 



126 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and time realize themselves. A space and time 
which should not give evidence of their reality 
through motions, would not be known and would 
not concretely exist. Conceived independently of 
motion, they are pure abstractions. The condition 
of space and time must therefore be the condition of 
all motion, and this condition — or, in other words, 
the Absolute conceived with immediate reference 
to motion — is what men ordinarily term power or 
force. (This they do, as is well known, in agnostic 
systems of "philosophy," where, as the ground or 
source of all phenomena, — i. e., cases of the redistri- 
bution of matter and motion, — a " persistent," but 
"inscrutable" and "unknowable," because non-sen- 
sible and absolute, "force" is postulated.) God, 
then, is for the Bible the Absolute also in point of 
power. "I am the Almighty God" (Gen. xvii. i). 
Such is the character in which the Absolute is re- 
vealed and displayed in the magnificently simple 
and impressive first chapters of the Book of Genesis. 
The Absolute, God, is indeed power, is "force"; "power 
belongeth unto God" (Ps. lxii. n); "without" Him 
"nothing is strong" (Collect for the Fourth Sunday 
after Trinity). But he is not for that reason mere 
brute or blind force, nor inscrutable. The Scriptures 
no more countenance that impossible abstraction, 
which is termed blind or brute or mechanical force, 
than does philosophy. It is only from the point of 
view of purely physical science, as the science which 
has to do with the sensible as such, and with it 
alone, and which therefore rightly and necessarily 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 127 

abstracts from all that is non-sensible, — including, 
therefore, force itself, — it is only from this point of 
view, I say, that force can come to be spoken of- — I 
will not say, conceived — as something "blind," "brute," 
or "purely mechanical." These epithets belong, at 
most, only to the sensible manifestations of force, 
but never to force itself. No, the conception of force 
is not a mechanical, but a spiritual conception, and 
so physics, which must needs speak of force and forces, 
points, for its own ideal completion, to metaphysics, 
just as the sensible, universally, points for its com- 
plete explanation to the spiritual. The Scriptures, 
I say, countenance only a spiritualistic conception 
of force or power. No doubt "In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth " by his power. But 
it is also just as indubitable, — as for philosophy, so 
also for religion, — that " The Lord by wisdom hath 
founded the earth; by understanding hath he estab- 
lished the heavens" (Prov. iii. 19). Just because the 
power to create was there, the wisdom was also pres- 
ent; for power and wisdom are but names for two 
ideally distinguishable, but really inseparable, as- 
pects or functions of the one only reality which is 
truly substantial and absolute and eternal, namely, 
Spirit. As of wisdom, so of power, the ontological 
explanation is living spirit. Power and wisdom, 
taken by themselves, are dead abstractions. They 
are real only through their organic identity with, or 
functional relation to, Spirit. And if to either of 
these two a primacy or logical priority is to be as- 
signed, this must be given the rather to wisdom than 



128 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to power; for wisdom is a category or function which 
leads the mind by a less circuitous and indirect route 
to Spirit, as its ontological condition, than power. 
In the beginning was, unquestionably, the Power. 
This were a true saying; but to say it were undoubt- 
edly — such is the havoc that a sense-begotten habit 
and necessity of abstraction plays with human con- 
ceptions — to express less unequivocally to the pop- 
ular mind the truth about the Absolute than to em- 
ploy another expression, which strictly includes the 
foregoing, and to say, with Scripture, " In the be- 
ginning was the Word." God, the Absolute, upholds 
all things " by the word of his power T The Word, 
the Logos, the Reason or Wisdom, is the Power; 
and vice versa: who says the one, says also, by nec- 
essary implication, the other; since both — viz., power 
and " word," or "wisdom" — exist and are known 
only as organically one in and inseparable from the 
life or reality of Spirit. And so God declares, through 
the mouth of his prophet, that he is God, the Abso- 
lute and Eternal One, " not [primarily] by might, 
nor by power, but by my spirit" (Zech. iv. 6). As 
such, he is personal. He is not the everlasting " It 
is," but the " I am." " Before the mountains were 
brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth 
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, 
thou art God" (Ps. xc. 2). The human spirit thus 
looks into the face of " the high and lofty One that 
inhabiteth eternity," and addresses him, not as a 
mysterious It, but, familiarly, as "Thou." It recog- 
nizes in him, the Absolute, the personal Spirit, 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE ABSOLUTE. 129 

the " dwelling-place for all generations," the ever- 
lasting Home, nay, the never-absent Father, of its 
own and of all spirits. Here it, the relative, and de- 
pendent, finds the secret and the source of all its own 
true life and reality, as of all its true blessedness. 
But now we may seem to be treading on ground for- 
eign to our subject, which is God, the Absolute, as 
such, and not the special relations of man to him. 
And yet, if God is to be known by man, it is obvious 
that this very act of knowledge must bring him into 
relation to man. Not only is this so, but for the 
Christian consciousness God becomes truly known, 
or fully revealed and at last "seen," in the spiritual 
personality of a man, — the "man Christ Jesus." 

We saw in our third lecture that, for philosophy, 
the knowledge of the infinite or absolute, as spiritual 
personality, is founded in and rendered possible 
through the spiritual personality of man. The con- 
scious thought and knowledge of man, as such 
personality, involved, as we saw, the present power 
and light, and thought of the universal, living, and 
absolute Spirit. The relative and finite in human 
life and thought appeared, not as bounding, limiting, 
warding off, and repelling the true infinite — which 
were absurd — but as enclosed in it. And it was 
seen to be thus "enclosed," not in a purely me- 
chanical way, — which again were impossible; the 
infinite is not a mechanical instrument; it is not a 
vessel made of space or time, or both, — but in an 
organic union, as it were members of a living ideal 
whole, to the very comprehension and existence of 



130 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

which the whole is necessary, even if they are not 
equally required as well for the existence as for the 
comprehension of the whole. It is only for an 
essentially sensational theory of knowledge, and for 
a philosophy or theology founded thereon, that 
self-knowledge becomes a principle or occasion, not 
of knowledge, but of necessary ignorance, concern- 
ing the Absolute or God. Here, where the highest 
conceptions and relations that are known or rec- 
ognized are sensible and mechanical ones, the dic- 
tum is not unnaturally accepted and put forth, that 
" All limitation is negation." In the realm of purely 
sensible relations this is obviously true. Here the 
limiting is only other than, or different from the 
limited. But to affirm that the same is true uni- 
versally and without qualification, is, obviously, 
simply to affirm, without demonstration and even 
contrary to demonstration, that the absolute object 
of knowledge is sensible, or that that, which is true 
within the realm of sensible phenomena as such, is 
true within the whole realm of all possible knowl- 
edge. But philosophy, as we have seen, has a 
demonstration to the contrary founded on experi- 
mental fact. Philosophic science, as in ideal,* the 
pure and complete science of experience, finds the 
absolute object of knowledge to be, not dead, but 
living, not mechanical and sensible, but organic and 
spiritual; and its highest conceptions are framed ac- 
cordingly. And so philosophy perceives and de- 
monstrates that in the spiritual realm of absolute 
reality limitation is not negation alone, but is 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE ABSOLUTE. 131 

also, and primarily, affirmation. Here the dictum 
is, " All limitation is self-limitation, and so is self- 
affirmation." The limitation proceeds from a self, 
which, by the very fact and act of limiting itself, 
affirms itself. It is thus that philosophy finds in the 
very life and thought of the finite and relative indi- 
vidual, — nay, more, finds even in the lowest forms 
of sensible existence, — the true infinite and absolute, 
not negated and obscured, simply, but affirmed. 
The true finite, or the finite truly known, (not sim- 
ply, sensibly perceived^) reveals the true infinite. It 
points toward the infinite, not away from it. And 
so finite man, in truly knowing and affirming him- 
self, as a spiritual personality, knows also and 
affirms God, as the present Father of his spirit. 

The Scriptures, now, not only recognize and con- 
firm the general truth of this statement of the case, 
but also, and especially, in their account of the na- 
ture and work of the Christ, they furnish a concrete 
and special application of it, in which we may say 
that the whole and characteristic essence of Chris- 
tianity is contained. 

The Scriptures recognize, I say, the general truth 
in question. This they do, for example, through 
their conception of "a law written in the heart," and 
through and in which the nature of God, the law- 
giver, is immediately made known. A writing in the 
heart is no mere mechanical writing. The heart is . 
no mere dead tablet of stone. Nor is it merely the 
seat of blind and involuntary feeling. " The heart " 
is the living human spirit. It is organically one 



132 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

with mind. Its functions are intelligent, for " with 
the heart man believeth unto righteousness," and so 
is " wise unto salvation." And so, then, this is the 
promise of God, which is echoed from the Old Test- 
ament into the New: — " I will put my laws into 
their mind, and write them in their hearts: and [so] 
I will be [not simply appear, or be reported] to them 
a God, and they shall be to me [in immediate, living 
relation] a people: and they shall not teach every 
man his neighbor, [as though the true knowledge 
of God were a matter of casual information, to be 
acquired by mechanical communication of 'ideas'], 
and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord 
[as who should say, for example, I tell you that 
there is ' a God,' and who and what he is, and 
there are no data at hand in your own mind and 
heart, whereby you might know him yourself, by 
proper self-knowledge, unless I or some one else 
told you]: for all shall [not falteringly and doubt- 
fully believe in, but] know me, from the least [from 
those whose stock of erudition, or of miscellaneous, 
mechanical, and essentially contingent information, 
is the least] to the greatest" (Heb. viii. 10, n). 

But, secondly, it is in the personality of a trans- 
cendent Man that Christianity finds the true rev- 
elation, the present knowledge, and the perfect 
exemplification of the nature of the absolute and 
everlasting God. To the Christian consciousness 
this man is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 
i. 15). Speaking in his own name, he says, "Neither 
knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 133 

to whomsoever the Son will reveal him " (Matt, 
xi. 27). And again, " He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father" (John xiv. 9). "He that believeth 
on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent 
me" (John xii. 44). And yet the true sight of him 
is not the sight of him, the human individual, as he 
traverses the coasts of Judea, on his never-tiring 
mission of good works and of love. And the true 
belief is not identical with the intellectual admission 
that he, as Son of God and Son of man, once actually 
walked this earth. In language which, to the dis- 
ciples, the eyes of whose understanding had not yet 
been fully opened, doubtless seemed very paradoxi- 
cal, he declared that they would first truly see him, 
when he should have gone to the Father (John xvi. 
16; and xiv. 19: u Yet a little while, and the world 
seeth me no more, but ye see me "). The true sight 
of Jesus, that sight which involves the vision also 
of the Father, or of the " invisible God," is, not 
physically, but spiritually, conditioned. It is a sight 
which is of, by, and for the spirit, and so conforms 
strictly to the requirements and conditions of abso- 
lute knowledge. It is a sight, or knowledge, which 
is rendered possible only through the present illu- 
mination of the absolute, living, and Holy Spirit 
of truth. It is a knowledge, therefore, in organic 
dependence on the Absolute Spirit. If all our "suf- 
ficiency to think" is " of God," more especially is 
our ability to think and know the Christ divinely 
derived; whence no man can say [knowingly] that 
Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor. 



134 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

xii. 3). " Through him we have access by one Spirit 
unto the Father" (Eph. ii. 18). The true understand- 
ing of Christ is a "spiritual understanding" (Col. i. 9). 
And the true witness concerning Christ is a witness 
of the Spirit, and for the spirit. The " Spirit of truth 
. . . . proceedeth from the Father" and testifies 
of Christ (John xv. 26). He takes of the things of 
Christ and shews them unto us (xvi. 15). And that 
which He, the absolute principle of all intelligence, 
the very " Spirit of truth," shall enable the true 
disciples to see and to know, is — in the Master's 
own words—" that I am in my Father, and ye in 
me, and I in you" (John xiv. 20); and again, "as 
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also 
may be one in us: ... . I in them, and thou in me, that 
they may be made perfect in one" (John xvii. 21, 
23). Not miracles alone, or as such, nor what is 
termed " credible historic testimony," but the re- 
ception of this witness of the spirit and of fact — the 
fact of men "made perfect," perfected, completed, 
rendered at last true, and not merely nominal, men 
through actual, living, spiritual union through the 
Son with the Father — this it is which according to 
Christ shall make " the world " know and "believe 
that thou hast sent me" (John xvii. 21). The kind 
of being which is here known, corresponds to the 
kind of knowing: both are spiritual; and we shall 
have presently to inquire what light is thrown for 
us upon the nature of spiritual being by the fore- 
mentioned witness of the spirit concerning the Christ. 
But first we mention that spiritual being, or the 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 135 

Absolute, is often referred to in the Scriptures, not 
only in terms which express wisdom or intelligence, 
but also as " life." The gospel is spoken of as a 
revelation of life. In bringing to light the nature 
of God, it brings to light the nature of life. The 
peculiarity of the Father is that he "hath life in 
himself" (John v. 26). His being is life, the source 
and centre of which is in itself. Absolute being is 
absolute life. Life is not a mere physiological pro- 
cess, however much it may manifest itself in and by 
means of such process. Physiological processes are 
mechanical and sensible; life is organic and spiritual. 
"To be spiritually minded is life and peace " (Rom. viii. 
6). Peace, to be at peace, — this is not to be asleep 
or dead, but to have reached and to be constantly 
and energetically maintaining the perfection of liv- 
ing self-conscious being. It is to have banished con- 
tradiction from within oneself, to have no longer 
one member warring against another, and that not 
through the cessation of activity, but through the 
harmonious and successful direction of all activities 
according to the true law of one's nature. Absolute 
peace — "the peace of God " — is absolute life; and ab- 
solute life is absolute doing. The life and being of the 
Absolute is not, whether in the view of philosophy or 
of Christianity, a life or state of " blessed indolence," 
after the manner of the gods of Epicureanism or of 
the "First Cause" of modern Deism. "My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work" (John v. 17). "God 
is not the God of the dead, but of the living " (Matt, 
xxii. 32). What the Son of God brings to man is 



136 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

more abundant life (John x. 10). Just as the Hebrew- 
Psalmist recognizes in God the Father the "fountain 
of life " (Ps. xxxvi. 9), so he, who is conscious of and 
declares his oneness with the everlasting Father, 
calls himself the "bread of life" (John vi. 35), and 
the bringer of "living water" (John iv. 14), of which 
he who partakes shall " not die " (John vi. 50), but 
have in him eternal, i. e., absolute, unqualified life, 
being, substance. But this life, I must once again 
repeat, is not identical with mere inert existence 
or mere persistence in time. Of such existence, 
absolutely considered, neither philosophy, as the 
scientific, analytic interpretation of experience, nor 
religion knows aught. Life in all its absolute purity 
is pure and unqualified activity. As such, it is not 
identical with any purely blind, unconscious phe- 
nomena of motion in a sensible organism. Nor is it 
aimless. That is no true activity which does nothing, 
and there is no true doing in which no aim or end 
is realized. No, the true and perfect doing, in which 
consists the true and perfect living, is a conscious, 
purposeful, and willing activity, which (on man's 
part) accomplishes the will of God, the absolute law 
of being, and so only effectually realizes its own 
nature. It is, in the case of us men, a rising to the 
stature of "a perfect man," or "unto the measure 
of the stature of" that fulness of life and of being 
which is in the Son of Man and of God (Eph. iv. 13). 
True life, then, is an affair of the self-conscious spirit. 
"The spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. hi. 6). "It is the 
Spirit that quickeneth [en-liv-ens]; the flesh profiteth 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 137 

nothing [or has, absolutely considered, nothing to 
do with life as such; its relation to life is, at most, 
only instrumental]; the words that I speak unto 
you, they are spirit, and they are life " (John vi. 63). 
" The words," — not as a mere letter, or combination 
of letters. Thus considered, they profit as little as 
the flesh. " The letter killeth." It is only the words 
as apprehended by spiritual intelligence, that are at 
once a vehicle of " spirit " and of " life, "and organi- 
cally identical therewith. " Whoso findeth" — not 
ignorance, not the stupidity of " the Unconscious," 
but — wisdom, "findeth life," while all they that hate 
her " love death" (Prov. viii. 35, 36). Who is not 
reminded again of Aristotle's beautiful and truthful 
definition: " Life is energy of mind," or, as we should 
say, "of spirit" (Greek vovs)} We conclude, there- 
fore, under this head, that for the Christian Script- 
ures, God, or the Absolute, is life; that, as such, he 
is intelligent activity; and that this activity con- 
sists in an eternal and ever-complete process of 
self-actualization. 

Finally, we have to notice that for the Christian 
consciousness God, the Absolute, is Love. God 
loves with "an everlasting love" (Jer. xxxi. 3). 
He draws with "bands of love" (Hos. xi. 4). "Love 
is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, 
and knoweth God" (1 John iv. 7). It is love that 
fulfils the law (Rom. xiii. 10), and is the quickening 
and operative principle in "faith" (Gal. v. 6). Abid- 
ing in Christ and sharing his divine and eternal life 
is otherwise described as continuing in his constrain- 



138 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ing love (John xv. 9; 2 Cor. v. 14). Love is thus a 
principle of knowledge; nay, rather, since love is 
represented as the active condition on which our 
apprehension of God, the absolute object of knowl- 
edge, is dependent, shall we not say that it is the 
principle of knowledge as such, or par excellence ? 
Love, I say, is represented as a principle of knowl- 
edge, of practical activity, of life and of genuine or 
eternal being. "Life," in the words of a great 
Christian poet, " is energy of love." God, who is 
absolute life, is, for the Christian consciousness, 
— which philosophy does not in this respect belie, — 
absolute Love. 1 

Absolute being, then, is, according to the Scriptures 
of the Christian religion, absolute Spirit, in the forms 
of absolute intelligence, absolute life, and absolute 
love. And these three are not mere accidental 
modes, but essential and constitutive attributes of 
the divine nature, or of absolute being. The inter- 
pretation and exemplification of them are offered to 
us in the personality of Christ, the God-man, and in 
those words which the Christian world accepts as the 
true and perfect expression of his self-consciousness. 
In the light of these words, — the most important of 
which, for our present purpose, we have already 
cited, — and in the light of philosophic science, let 
us now see what sort of a conception they authorize 
and necessitate respecting the nature of God, as 
Absolute Spirit. Is this conception flighty, mys- 
terious, and, if not positively irrational, yet at least 
non-rational, in the curious sense of being utterly 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 139 

" superior to " and so out of the reach of " reason " ? 
Does it illuminate, and is it thus confirmed by, our 
experience, in the most comprehensive and exact 
sense of this term, or does it only confound and add 
to the mystery of experience ? In and through it 
do we really know a God who is near at hand7 or 
only " admit" One who is far off? Is God, for the 
Christian consciousness, — nay, more, is he for uni- 
versal philosophic consciousness, considered as a 
transcript of the absolute content of human experi- 
ence, — a present and intelligible reality, or a remote 
and unknowable " thing-in-itself " ? 

More especially, God, as absolute Spirit, is, for the 
historic consciousness of the Church, Triune. The 
Church has never wearied of proclaiming, and with 
all her energy insisting on, the fact of the divine 
Trinity. Is she right in this ? Is the alleged fact 
indeed a fact, and if so, what sort of a fact is it ? Is 
it one which, lying wholly beyond the realm of our 
conscious experience, falling, therefore, under none 
of its categories, and being altogether insusceptible 
of experimental verification, we must and do accept 
purely on the ground of credible testimony, just as 
we should accept and believe the testimony of a com- 
petent witness, who had been privileged to visit the 
moon and brought back the report that upon that sat- 
ellite water exists in a fourth state, neither gaseous, 
nor aqueous, nor icy, — a state wholly unknown to ter- 
restrial experience and which, by reason of the fixed 
limits of such experience, we are quite unable to 
conceive or imagine ? Is the Trinity an attribute 



140 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of the known or of the unknown God ? According 
to the Church, it is essential to God, that he be 
triune. Trinity is the eternal and constitutive law 
of his absolute being. At the same time it is held 
that God has revealed himself in his works. He is 
believed to have made man in his own image, and 
to have made " clearly seen " and " understood by 
the things that are made," " the invisible things of 
him." Is, then, man only a quasi-image of God, and 
does the world furnish only a quasi-revelation of 
him ? Is that an "image," and is that a " revelation," 
which neither images nor reveals the essential char- 
acter — i. e. } in this case, the divine Trinity — of the 
original ? These are serious and weighty questions, 
on the right answer to which the whole edifice of 
Christian doctrine would seem to depend for its 
security. 

A doctrine which expresses the essential truth 
respecting the absolute principle of all being and of 
all intelligence, cannot but be full of illumination 
for all derived or dependent intelligence and for the 
comprehension of all derived existence. In the ab- 
solute the derivative must find itself, not confounded, 
but explained. In the knowledge of it, it should 
find and feel itself at home, and not as if in an ut- 
terly strange and unknown land. The intelligence, 
as well as the moral nature, of man should find in 
God its " strength." The Church was, in my judg- 
ment, — and I believe that I express the true historic 
verdict of philosophic science in this matter, — guided 
by a true instinct, or a true inspiration, in making 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 141 

the doctrine of the Trinity the corner-stone in the 
confession of her faith, and is right in praying that 
she and her children may evermore be kept " stead- 
fast in this faith." It is, or involves, to my mind, 
the very key to all true illumination for the intellect 
as well as to all solid and saving comfort for the 
soul. But it certainly is not this, — on the contrary, 
it is purely and justly " a stumbling-stone and rock 
of offence," — when it is preached only as a sort of 
mystic or magic formula, which all the faithful are 
to repeat, but into the meaning of which they are 
warned, as they value the stability of their "faith," 
not to inquire too closely. 

And now, before proceeding with the positive 
portion of our inquiry, we may mention, first, that 
trinity does not simply mean threeness. Trinity 
means three in one, — a unity, the very condition of 
which is multiplicity, or, in particular, triplicity. 
Such unity is not unknown to experience. On the 
contrary, we have already, in a previous lecture, ob- 
served such a unity lying at the basis, and constitut- 
ing the ever-present condition, of all our conscious 
experience; and we shall subsequently have occasion 
more amply to explain and illustrate it. But trinity, 
it must be noticed, is a spiritual category, and not 
a sensible one. It is a category of the noumenal 
and absolute, not of the sensibly phenomenal, as 
such, and "relative." The attempt to translate 
trinity into terms of the sensible, to find for it a 
purely sensible image, and to think or conceive it 
by means of such image, must and does therefore 



142 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

necessarily fail. What is thus imaged is not and 
cannot be trinity, or three in essential unity, but — if 
I may again be allowed this expression — mere three- 
ness, or three which are joined in a unity that is at 
most only accidental and superficial, not essential 
Sensible unity is unity in or of time and space. It 
is, as such, or abstractly considered, without inher- 
ent difference or even extension, and its type is the 
mathematical point. When several unities are joined 
together, their union, if we consider them purely on 
their sensible side, as conditioned only by time and 
space, is a union of mere aggregation. It is purely 
accidental and relative, not essential and absolute. 
Each unit is no less that which it is, or its inherent 
nature is not a whit changed, even though it be 
separated by an interval of indefinite extent in time 
and space from all the rest. Take, for example, 
three members of the human species, considered 
simply as so many different, sensibly visible individ- 
uals. You find them together and say that these 
constitute one group. But you would say the same 
thing if their number were four, or ten, or ten thou- 
sand, etc. Let them scatter to the four quarters of 
the globe, and the one group, as such, is no more, 
yet the individuals remain without change the same. 
Their common unity, considered as members of one 
group or collection, was accidental and superficial, 
and dependent on no particular number. There is, 
indeed, a unity which, after their dispersion, still 
holds them together. But this is not a sensible uni- 
ty, but an intelligible one. It is the unity of kind, 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE ABSOLUTE, 143 

or of a common humanity. And yet this unity, too, 
is independent of any particular number in the sen- 
sible individuals comprehended under it. Humanity, 
considered as an ideal kind, is just the same, whether 
the race be restricted, in the number of its sensible 
individuals, to an original pair, or contain, as at 
present, its hundreds of millions of such individuals. 
In short, sensible analogies, or analogies subject to 
mechanical and sensible conditions, are absolutely 
incompetent to illustrate for us the notion of trinity. 
They have nothing to do with it. And yet most, if 
not all, of the difficulties which have been met in 
the attempt to comprehend it, have arisen from the 
obstinate determination to comprehend it only 
through the use of such analogies. The real diffi- 
culties thus lay, not in the notion itself, but in the 
subjection of the inquirer's mind to sensible preju- 
dices. Trinity, I repeat, is not a sensible, but a 
spiritual category. It denotes, not a mechanico- 
sensible relation, but an organic and vital one. It is 
absolute and essential, and not merely relative and 
accidental, unity in and through triplicity. It is 
dynamic, and not static. Trinity is not mere three- 
ness, and "trinitarianism " is not mere " tritheism." 
Trinity is, in a word, concrete unity. It is unity 
in, through, and by very means of difference. Its 
attribute is, like that which the Scriptures ascribe to 
God, " fulness," in distinction from emptiness. It has 
(unlike the "mathematical point") a content. It has 
a meaning. It is something, or has definite character. 
It is real; it is experimental; it is knowable; and it 



144 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

is, consequently, the type of the only sort of unity 
which is recognized in real objective science and 
philosophy. And it is all this in distinction from 
that abstract, inexperimental, contentless unity, 
which constitutes the empty ideal of theological ag- 
nosticism. A perfect specimen, I repeat, of this ab- 
stract unity is furnished in the conception of the 
mathematical point, which is, by hypothesis, some- 
thing in and of space and time and yet has abso- 
lutely no content of space or time. The conception 
is framed, namely, by abstracting from all exten- 
sion of space or time, i. e. y from all concrete or real 
space and time. It is a quasi-sensible conception, and 
yet it is wholly unreal, because wholly abstract: it is 
formed by abstracting from the fundamental and 
constitutive conditions of sensible reality and of 
sensible consciousness. Here, now, we have that 
which many are pleased to term absolute unity, or 
unity which is absolutely separated from intrinsic or 
extrinsic difference. But in having it, we have ob- 
viously nothing, except a shadowy figment of the 
imagination. Of this kind is the unity which theo- 
logical agnosticism requires us to realize in thought, 
as a condition of the possibility of knowing God. We 
are called upon to abstract from all that is concrete, 
from all definite relation, or, in other words, from all 
the demonstrable conditions of objective and sub- 
jective experience, and the result is to be the One 
(so-called) God, whose nature is, obviously, to have 
no nature, whose existence is the illusion of exist- 
ence, the everlasting Nay, Nirvana. 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 145 

This abstract unity, it scarcely need be repeated, 
is no unity of or for concrete science. Where it begins, 
science and existence end and nescience and the ab- 
solute unreality of pure abstraction begin. Real sci- 
ence, absolute science, philosophy, knows no unity 
that is not concrete; and it is one of the peculiar 
merits of Christianity that it effectually guards its 
intelligent followers against the danger of attempt- 
ing to think or worship an abstraction, of the sort 
mentioned, under the name of God. God, for the 
Christian consciousness, is concretely one. He is 
one, because he is triune; he is triune, because he 
is really, concretely — not merely abstractly — one. 

We have seen that God is, according to the bibli- 
cal conception, absolute Spirit. As such, he is pure, 
essential activity, and of this activity we have seen 
that intelligence, life, and love are three organically 
inseparable attributes. Now each of these — intelli- 
gence, life, and love — viewed concretely and experi- 
mentally, or in its living reality, and not in that 
death-bringing crucible of abstraction which formal 
logic 2 provides, is fundamentally and characteristi- 
cally a triune process. 

Intelligence, first, is the living function of a self. 
Its supreme form and condition is — not the mere 
so-called, superficially resultant state of conscious- 
ness, but — the fundamental and essentially constitu- 
tive activity of self-consciousness. And this activity 
is, essentially, not merely triadic, but triune. Its 
terms are necessarily three, and its nature is just 
as necessarily one. Its terms are subject, object, 



146 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and the synthesis or organic identity of subject and 
object. The first term in ideal order is subject, which 
in order to know itself must convert itself into its 
own object, or must become to itself the diametrical 
opposite of that which it first was: it must become 
to itself, in form, another, its own other. There is 
an ideal movement (so we are obliged, by an im- 
perfect sensible analogy, to describe it,) proceeding 
from the term called subject to the term called ob- 
ject. But then, in order that the movement may 
be complete, or that there may be a real and com- 
plete act of intelligence, the movement must not 
terminate in the second term of the series — the term' 
called " object" — but must return to its original 
starting-point in the term called "subject." Only 
in this way, obviously, can the subject be aware of 
its object, or of itself as its own object. And this 
"ideal movement," as we have termed it, is not, 
as the language of our description would seem to 
imply, purely successive, or a movement purely and 
simply in time, and hence absolutely conditioned by 
time, or having time for its "form." On the con- 
trary, instead of being thus conditioned by time, 
it is itself, as the philosophic examination of the 
foundations of conscious experience demonstrates, 
the eternal condition of successive time. The whole 
"process" of the act of self-consciousness "takes 
place," or is complete, in a non-temporal Now. Its 
form is the form of eternity. In it a process, which 
in the form of time would fall apart into a successive 
series of acts, or movements, is compressed into one 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; —THE ABSOLUTE. 147 

act. Here beginning and end cannot be separated 
by space or time; otherwise there were no self- 
consciousness. In the technical language of phi- 
losophy, the subject which starts out on this career 
of self-conscious activity, must, throughout its whole 
progress, nevertheless remain "by" or "with" itself, 
or "at home." It goes out from the station termed 
"subject" to the station termed "object," and at the 
same time never leaves its starting-point. It "loses 
its life" and in the same indivisible instant "finds" 
it. In describing such a process, which is a process 
of spirit, the language of sense and of sensible rela- 
tions can be applied only metaphorically and at best 
cannot but seem paradoxical. And yet nothing is 
more demonstrably the language of absolute and 
immediate truth, than this language as we have thus 
applied it. 3 Moreover, the description which we have 
given does not, as may perhaps at first be thought, 
apply only to the case of an abstraction called "pure 
self-consciousness," conceived in complete but im- 
aginary, separation from all definite and particular, 
empirical consciousness. On the contrary, it is of 
universal application, since there is no consciousness 
whatsoever that is not conditioned by and contained 
in the organism of self-consciousness; and there is 
no self-consciousness that does not realize itself in 
"objective consciousness." The distinction of sub- 
ject and object is not merely formal and artificial; 
it is also, if I may use this expression, material; it 
is real and essential. And yet their "identity" is 
none the less real and essential. Only, this identity 



148 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

is not abstract, but concrete. It is not a sensible 
identity. It is not the identity of a mathematical 
point with itself, nor of a line or surface or solid or 
any other sensibly individual object, as such. It is 
not sensible, but spiritual; not dead, but living iden- 
tity. It is not identity excluding difference, but iden- 
tity which is conditioned by, and so exists in and by 
very means of, difference. It is unity, but it is also 
trinity. It is true and living unity — real, objective, 
experimental, concrete, and not merely (like the 
unity of the mathematical point) abstract, hypo- 
thetical, and imaginary — for the very reason that 
it is trinity. 4 

(We may mention parenthetically, in passing, that 
the fate of the pure sensationalist, in dealing with the 
facts now under consideration, is full of negative and 
warning instruction for us. The sensationalist not 
only admits, to begin with, the distinction of subject 
and object, but insists on it also with exaggerated 
energy. Recognizing, and being able to deal with, 
none but purely sensible categories of thought and 
experience, distinction means for him absolute differ- 
ence, and nothing else. Subject and object are dif- 
ferent: this means, for the sensationalist, that they 
are completely and mechanically separate from each 
other: where the one is, the other is not. But then — 
such is the implicit argument — nothing can act where 
it is not: all action depends on contact. In view of 
the mechanical separation of subject and object, an 
action of the subject, whereby it should cognize the 
object, is impossible; and this is the first alleged 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 149 

ground of philosophical scepticism ! But then, hav- 
ing gone thus far, sensationalism is immediately com- 
pelled to recognize the other side of the case, and 
to admit the necessary identity of subject and object 
in knowledge. But, having none but purely sensible 
categories of thought at its command, it is unable 
to think this identity as any thing other than a baf- 
fling mystery. The actual object is held to be a 
" modification" of the subject itself, and the actual 
subject is the same " modification." Subject and ob- 
ject are thus viewed as abstractly and sensibly, not 
concretely and organically identical, and so the 
question, which the experience of immediate and ob- 
vious fact forces the sensationalist to raise, namely, 
how the actual subject, which by hypothesis is it- 
self nothing but a simple conscious state or con- 
tingent series of such states, can yet be aware of or 
know itself, whether as past, present, or future, — this 
question, I say, is not answered, because from the 
point of view of abstract unity it is unanswerable, 
but is simply and arbitrarily put aside as insoluble. 
Such is always the result of the attempt to construct 
theory independently of experimental fact, instead 
of making it the faithful transcript of such fact, and 
nothing else). 

Man, as spirit and as intelligence, is thus himself 
created " in the image" of the triune God. And it 
will be observed that we find this image, not prima- 
rily in any (to first appearance, accidental) triad of 
psychological faculties or functions, but (thus far) in 
the form, nature, and conditions of the fundamental 



150 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and universal activity of intelligence itself,-whereby 
man is effectively constituted a living spirit. The 
like image of God, the Absolute, is found, secondly, 
in all his works, so far as they in any way partake of 
Life; — which is not strange, for we have found Scrip- 
ture and philosophy agreeing in ascribing to the Ab- 
solute, life, as an essential attribute, and in regarding 
life as the energy of Spirit. And so indeed we find 
that all life, all living, is conditioned upon a triune 
process. It, like self-consciousness, involves at once 
the distinction and opposition and also the organic 
union or identity of apparent opposites. Philosophic 
science finds the rudimentary analogon of life — nay, 
let us rather say, as we may, that it finds the pres- 
ent power and the remote, but not wholly misleading 
image of the Absolute Life — under sensible conditions 
in the molecule which at once repels and attracts 
its neighbor, its alter ego, and repels, as the very 
condition of its attracting. It is only through this 
essentially non-temporal process that it maintains 
itself, its individuality, in existence. It is only thus 
that it, as alleged molecule, exists. In higher stages 
of natural existence, in what is known as peculiarly 
the organic realm, the same thing is more conspic- 
uously and fully illustrated. To Goethe, the poet- 
naturalist, the process of life was especially manifest 
in the metamorphosis of plants. Here one organ ap- 
parently transforms itself into, or goes out into and 
under the form of, organs other than itself. It goes 
out from itself, and yet remains constantly at home 
or "by itself." It goes out into its other, and lo, in 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 151 

this other, or in the completed, complex organism, 
which includes both it and its " other," it finds noth- 
ing but its full and completed self. It loses, but to 
find. The final result is identical with the beginning, 
with this difference, that the former contains expli- 
citly, or in developed fulness, what the latter con- 
tained only implicitly, or in compressed and undevel- 
oped fulness. The process of life is strictly a process 
of the potential universal transforming or dispersing 
itself into the particular, and yet not changing its 
own nature, — the rather, simply realizing it under 
the form of time, or of a temporal process. And yet 
the process just described is, like the process of self- 
consciousness, per se a non-temporal one, and the 
non-temporal, here, as in the other case, is the con- 
dition of the temporal, — a fact which physiological 
metaphysics overlooks, and so is led to seek for the 
living among the dead, by attempting to find the root 
and essence of life in various successions and trans- 
formations of sensible motions, i. e., of motions which 
are purely conditioned by the forms of time and space. 
It seeks the cause in that which is in reality only a 
product. Absolute Life is triune, and temporal life 
furnishes a serial image of this triune nature. But 
the life of absolute Spirit, which, as such, is the cre- 
ative condition of time, is, also as such, not in time 
or subject to its form. It is not serial. It has not to 
await the full development of its nature from the 
hands of time. It is only eternal, non-temporal, life. 
In other words, it is real and genuine life, without 
limitation or qualification. The absolute process of 



152 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

life and the absolute process of intelligence are in 
form and nature one. Each is in form triune and 
each is eternal. (It is "eternal," i. e., absolute life, 
and, thus, a participation in absolute being — a "par- 
taking of the divine nature " — which accrues to them 
who receive "power to become the sons of God"; 
being "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the 
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.") 

Finally, the same logical and substantial de- 
scription, which belongs to intelligence and to life, 
considered absolutely, belongs also to love. If in- 
telligence and life are, not merely accidental and 
phenomenal modes of existence, but genuine on- 
tological principles — principles of absolute being, or 
of the being of the Absolute, — the same is true of 
love. As such philosophy, both in ancient and in 
modern times (but philosophy, as such, knows no 
distinction of time!), has recognized it, and as such 
the Scriptures declare it. Of God it is said, not 
simply that he loves, or that he is loving or capable 
of loving, but that he is Love. By as much as God 
is, he acts. His being is doing, is activity. And 
by as much as the law and the reality of absolute 
activity are the law and the reality of intelligence 
and life, by so much are they also the law and real- 
ity of love. Like intelligence and life, so love loses 
itself in an object other than itself, with the result of 
"finding," and so first becoming and being, its true, 
completed, and real self. Like them, it "scattereth, 
and yet increaseth" (Prov. xi. 24). More than they 
it seems to express the fundamental energy of being, 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE ABSOLUTE. 153 

so that, from this point of view, we may say that it 
is in love that intelligence and life find their com- 
pletion. Like them, again, it is organic. It is a 
whole, an universal, that realizes itself in and through 
its objects, which are as its organic members. And 
so, like them, it is an ideal-spiritual process, non- 
temporal — superior to time, — and triune. 

Now all these processes, or this one process under 
three different names, we have described in accord- 
ance with the demonstrative analyses which phil- 
osophic science furnishes of the deepest, yet ever- 
present, foundations and conditions of human 
experience. Human experience is dependent, par- 
tial, incomplete. At its best, it is only a fragment. 
11 Now," says the Apostle, " I know in part " (i Cor. 
xiii. 12). But the divine experience, if I may employ 
this phrase, is not thus limited. It is independent, 
complete, absolute. But it is not thus rendered 
wholly foreign and alien in its nature to human 
experience, so that no inference may legitimately 
be made from the latter to the former. On the 
contrary, just because our experience is a "frag- 
ment," and a fragment of a living, organic whole, 
we may read in it the law and the nature of the 
whole. 5 What human experience, therefore, is de- 
pendency and incompletely, that the divine " ex- 
perience" is independently, completely, and without 
limiting qualification. What we now "see through 
a glass darkly," that same God sees and is in the 
eternal radiance of absolute truth and absolute 
reality, and that same we — we, our identical selves, 



154 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

with an intelligence not changed in nature, but 
only perfected and completed in kind — may, and 
the Apostle declares that we shall, "see face to 
face." That which we now perceive to be the ideal 
and essential nature — however hampered by finite 
conditions — of intelligence, life, and love in us, that 
God, the Absolute, is in unqualified reality. If each 
of these so-called "functions" is, demonstrably, 
within the limits of our immediate, as well as of our 
widest, human experience, a process which involves 
a triad of terms, the same holds true of these same 
functions in God. If, further, in each case the three 
terms are not simply so many sensibly discrete in- 
dividuals, separated by time and space; if, even in 
the case of us men and of our intelligent experience 
they do not and cannot simply follow each other as 
wholly independent terms in a temporal process, 
but are also, in another and more essential aspect, 
coetaneous or joined together in a relation with 
which time has specifically nothing to do (on which, 
the rather, time derivately depends); if they are in- 
separably united, and that in such a way that either, 
taken without the others, is a dead and unreal ab- 
straction; if each, while ideally and really (not sen- 
sibly) distinct from the others, is no less livingly 
and really identical with the others; if the identity 
of each depends on its organic identity or union 
with the others, so that each is the other (this par- 
adox of sense being thus the essential truth of spir- 
it); if, I say, all these things are true, as they de- 
monstrably are, within the sphere of our dependent 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 155 

experience, not less, but all the more, are they true 
within the sphere of the absolute experience of God, 
in intelligence, life, and love. In this diviner sphere 
all these things are true without limiting qualifica- 
tion. That Trinity, of which man and all created 
existence bear, not the sensible, but the spiritual, 
image, is with God, the Absolute One, the ever- 
lasting and unqualified fact. 

Human consciousness or intelligence is, as we have 
seen, more perfect, the more perfectly it finds itself 
in, or one with, its object. But human intelligence 
does not at once thus find itself. On the contrary, 
its object appears to it at first rather as an unknown 
and alien limit. The temporal growth or develop- 
ment of intelligence in the individual or the race 
(and it is only this, namely, the temporal history of 
intelligence, that empirical psychology contemplates), 
consists thus, of necessity, in the process of overcoming 
or breaking down this limit and reducing the object of 
intelligence into organic unity or oneness with itself, 
the subject. The " growth of intelligence" is thus 
but a process of the realization of intelligence, — a de- 
monstration or unfolding, in the dependent order of 
time, of that which intelligence per se, or independ- 
ently of this order and in its absolute and non-tem- 
poral nature, is. But in God, who is, precisely, 
absolute intelligence, this process of growth or de- 
velopment in time both need not and can not be. 
Consequently that which we have just seen to be 
the condition of the process — viz., the finding, or 
seeming to find, in the object of intelligence a pure 



156 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

limit, or something absolutely alien in nature and 
in being to the subject of intelligence — can not here 
exist. We have seen, indeed, that the limit is for 
us not an absolute one. Of this truth the whole 
progress of human intelligence, whether in the in- 
dividual or in the race, is a constant demonstration. 
The limit simply appears to us as an absolute one, 
or the object of intelligence appears to us at the 
outset as if it were purely and only alien from the 
subject, because our intelligence, subjected to the 
form of time, is thereby rendered necessarily subject 
to the law of growth or development. From an 
initial state in which it exists only in implicit or 
potential form, it has to await the explicit demon- 
stration, unfolding, or manifestation of its own na- 
ture, and thereby of the real nature of its apparently 
limiting object, as the result of a temporal process 
of evolution. But with the divine or absolute intel- 
ligence of God, this is not so. Here the limit in- 
deed exists, but not as an absolute one. From the 
first moment — if I may thus speak, in reference to a 
relation which is strictly non-temporal — from the 
first moment of its existence, the limit exists only 
as a limit which has been overcome. By the very 
act by which the divine intelligence is aware of its 
object, that object, while still remaining true object, 
ideally other than the subject and differentiated 
from it, is nevertheless recognized, in agreement 
with what we experimentally see to be the perfect 
nature of intelligence, as not foreign to, but con 
cretely one with, the subject. 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 157 

The collective object of human intelligence is, in 
the first instance, that which we term " the world," 
a universe whose substance, as we first conceive it, 
consists of brute, unintelligible, and absolutely non- 
spiritual matter. But with the progress of philo- 
sophic or real intelligence, the world assumes for 
us another nature, or, rather, is revealed for us in 
its truer nature, as a divine language, the mechan- 
ical expression of the divine Word, which was in 
the beginning, was with God, and was indeed God. 
The world, according to its first intention for us, 
the world as a mechanico-physical object, the phys- 
ical universe, known as pure physical science knows 
or aims to know it, is not the world as it exists for 
absolute intelligence. Physical science knows the 
appearance of the world. It knows it as a sum total 
of sensible phenomena. Absolute intelligence, on 
the contrary, knows the truth of the world. It 
knows the world as existing purely and only by, 
through, and for the divine Word. And this " Word," 
again, cannot, in agreement with the philosophic 
and experimental science of intelligence, be a mere 
abstraction. The science of intelligence requires 
the perfect object of intelligence to be connatural 
with the subject. But the true subject of intelli- 
gence is not an abstraction, but a living spirit, a 
person. The true object must therefore be also 
personal and spiritual. The contrast between hu- 
man and divine intelligence is then this: the former 
has for its first or immediate object the physical 
universe, as a language, the true reading of which 



158 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

brings it to the present knowledge of the divine 
Word, as the truth, or absolute causal reality of the 
universe; the latter, on the contrary, has for its 
first object, the absolute object, the Word, and only 
— if we may thus express it — in the second instance, 
or through the Word, by and through whom alone 
the physical worlds subsist, has it these latter for 
its object. God knows the world only according to 
its truth, viz., as the phenomenal expression and 
work of his own " other." And this other, in the 
concreter language of the Bible, is spiritual, is per- 
sonal, and is called his only and eternally begotten 
Son. 

But with the recognition of the distinction of 
Father and Son, the nature of the Absolute, or of 
God as absolute Spirit, under the attribute of in- 
telligence, life, or love, is not exhausted. In any 
proper trinity, or image thereof, such as intelligence, 
life, or love in man, 6 we know that the living, actual 
whole, the concrete unity, does not consist in any 
mere collective union or summation of the first two 
terms that philosophic science discovers therein. 
The third term, the " synthesis," as it is called, 
of the other two, were not, it is true, without the 
latter, but it does not result from their mechanical 
composition. It were not without them, but it is 
not abstractly identical with them. It has reality 
only in and through them, but its reality is not 
absorbed in them. On the other hand, it is just as 
true that the first two, taken either singly or to- 
gether, in separation from the third, are dead, un- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE ABSOLUTE. 159 

real, inexperimental abstractions. They, too, on 
their part, have their reality only in and through 
the third, while yet their reality is not absorbed in 
the latter. Translating that which is strictly non- 
temporal into the language of a temporal process, 
and doing this, as we are aware, at great risk of 
misrepresentation, we are compelled to speak of 
what we call the third term as that in which, pecul- 
iarly, any spiritual process or reality is completed. 
Intelligence is, for example, peculiarly the name 
of the " third term," or active " synthesis," in which 
subject and object become, not mere abstractions — 
such as they necessarily remain when separated 
from this tertium — but real. The third term con- 
cretely exhibits what may be called the substantial 
truth, both of subject and object, and also of itself. 
It thus comes, in consequence of the temporal order 
of our apprehension, to stand not only for itself (as 
" third term " or " synthesis "), but also peculiarly 
for the synthetic, concrete, actual, and living whole, 
in which both it and what we term its antecedents 
or component factors are included in organic iden- 
tity. The like is to be said respecting the third 
term in the sacred formula, by which the Christian 
Church expresses the nature of the triune God. 
The Holy Spirit is the name of the " third person" 
of the divine Trinity, as distinguished from the other 
two. And it is also the name by which the concrete 
reality, or the whole nature, of all the ''persons" is 
peculiarly and explicitly expressed. Man, in respect 
of his intelligence, is a spirit and an image of the 



160 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

divine Trinity, not as mere ''subject," nor as "ob- 
ject," but as the living synthesis of the two. And 
so there is a sense, in which it is peculiarly true to 
say that the Holy Spirit is the completing bond of 
the divine perfection. It is the spirit and bond 
of "holiness," which, among other things, means 
the bond of wholeness, of "the fulness of God" 
(Eph. iii. 19; cf. John i. 16); it is the bond of 
knowledge, of life, and peculiarly of love, which 
latter is itself called the "bond of perfectness" (Col. 
iii. 14). "Subject" Father, and "object" Son are 
organically one (John xvii. 21: "thou, Father, art 
in me, and I in thee ") in the — or, as a — Holy, an 
absolute, a perfect and unqualified, Spirit, or as 
love. 

I am, and can be, only too painfully aware how 
much, remains to be said, in order to render humanly 
complete the account of the subject that we have 
been considering. I would fain hope that I have 
at least said enough to demonstrate that the topic 
not only demands, but will richly repay, the most 
studious and faithful attention. I add only one or two 
observations in justification of the language which the 
Church adopts, in speaking of " three persons in one 
God." We men, relying ever too much upon, or 
giving too absolute a significance or worth to, the 
sensible analogies, in the midst and by means of 
which the development of our intelligence neces- 
sarily begins, are led to connect with the notion of 
personality the ideas of differentiation, limitation, 
contrast, opposition. We forget, if indeed we ever 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 161 

realize, that personality is a spiritual, and not a 
sensible, category of thought and being, and that 
in the sphere of spiritual being the very condition 
of true differentiation and limitation is essential com- 
munity, communion, or organic oneness. The true 
citizen of the state, for example, — he who is a citizen 
by and in the spirit, or as a true and proper man, and 
not simply as an irresponsible cog in an immense 
voting-machine, — develops his true personality, in 
this direction, not by separation from the common 
life of the state, but by intelligent, voluntary, and 
hearty identification of himself with it. The spirit- 
ual substance of the state becomes and is revealed 
as his own true substance as a citizen, and that, 
not to the detriment or diminution, but to the ful- 
filment and completion, of his own proper political 
personality. 

The state is a spiritual organism " mixed," as 
Aristotle might say, "with matter"; and this means, 
simply, subject to the limiting conditions of exist- 
ence within space and time. The sphere of the 
state is a sphere of imperfect or conditioned spiritu- 
ality. It can furnish, therefore, only an imperfect 
illustration of that which must hold true within the 
realm of divine or absolute spirituality. Still, we 
see that in the sphere of the state (as of any other 
social organism) community of consciousness and 
life is the fundamental basis, the necessary condition, 
nay, the essential content of true individual person- 
ality. And we see that this is so, just because, and 
so far as, the substance of the state is a spiritual 



162 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

reality, and in spite of its subjection to the contin- 
gencies and limitations of existence within space 
and time. In other words, just so far as the state 
is truly a spiritual reality, it illustrates, as in a dis- 
tant image, what the Church holds to be the truth, 
in the realm of absolute spirituality, respecting the 
divine Trinity, viz., that Father, Son and Holy Ghost 
are three persons, not in spite of their being one 
God, but because they are one God. 

But the image is only distant and imperfect. For 
instance, the number of persons who may participate 
in the common life of the state, or of any similar 
moral organism subject to the conditions of develop- 
ment in space and time, is contingent; it is not 
limited to three; and, if it were, it would still not 
be a perfect image of the divine Trinity. For in the 
cases supposed, the three persons would still remain 
sensibly individualized and sensibly distinguished 
from each other, and in this respect would possess, 
not the concrete unity which is essential trinity, 
but only the superficial' and abstract unity of an 
accidental mechanical aggregate. It is owing to 
the like reasons, too, that in the state the complete 
realization of a single public or common conscious- 
ness is and must always remain a problem, an ideal, 
only partially — and, indeed, very incompletely — 
realized. 

But the Absolute, the Absolute Spirit, we must 
remember, transcends and is the creative condition 
of space and time. Here, therefore, the perfect law 
of spirituality must be perfectly realized. Here no 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE ABSOLUTE. 163 

contingency in the number of terms or " persons" 
involved can exist. The number must be that which 
is essentially necessary for concrete unity; the number 
which, for such unity, may rightly be called the 
"perfect" one; and that, as we have seen, is three. 
The three terms, further, must be distinct. The 
ground of distinction, not being sensible individu- 
ation, can only be found in personality. This is 
the only ground of distinction which is known to 
us in the realm of pure spirituality. (Even among 
us men sensible individuation is the instrument and 
vehicle, rather than the true and essential ground, 
of distinction, which latter is, the rather, truly found 
only in spiritual personality.) And here, finally, 
in the realm of absolute spirituality, where no limit- 
ing barriers of sensible distinction exist, nought can 
prevent the ever-complete and perfect actualization 
of the one life and the one consciousness of the ever- 
blessed Three in One, 

In short, then, it would appear that the absolute 
personality of a God concretely — i. e. y really — one, 
must and can only be conceived as essential tri- 
personality. 



LECTURE VI. 

BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE WORLD. 

BY " the world " we mean, in the first instance, 
the universe as known to physical science. 
Or, we mean the whole realm of the finite, so far as 
finitude consists in subjection to the conditioning 
forms of space and time. We mean, in short, the 
universe as the realm of sensible phenomena. 

Such, at all events, is the way in which we must 
at the outset designate the object chosen for our 
present consideration. For it is as a sensible uni- 
verse that, in the temporal order of our knowledge, 
the world is first known to us. This is its first ap- 
pearance. It is, we may say, according to this its 
first appearance that we first know of the, world, and 
hence we are led to designate it accordingly. 

And yet it is not with the world according to its 
first appearance that we have primarily to do to- 
night. Not the world, as it is simply externally 
" known of" but the world as it is internally known, 
or knowable, — not the immediate sensible appear- 
ance, but the absolute reality or truth of the world, 
— this, and the biblical conception thereof, is what 
we wish now to consider. We want to know what 
(164) 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 165 

the sensible universe, as a realm of the finite and 
relative, is per se and in its relation to the Infinite 
and Absolute. This is the question, with which 
alone, as regards the physical universe, philosophy- 
is directly concerned, and the answer to which is of 
vital consequence for religion. 

At the risk of needless prolixity and repetition, 
let me say, more precisely, that of the physical 
universe there are, at least in ideal, two sciences, 
which may be characterized, with regard to their 
respective points of view, aims, and subject-matter, 
as, the one phenomenal, relative, immediate, the 
other noumenal or substantial, absolute, and final. 
The former of these may be termed pure physical 
science; the latter, the philosophy of nature. The 
former, as I have indicated in a former lecture, is 
abstract: it abstracts, in considering the universe, 
from all but its sensible appearance. Its object, if 
I may so express myself, is to ascertain and demon- 
strate the sensible or phenomenal What, and the 
mechanical How, of the physical universe. Its pur- 
pose is accomplished, when it has clearly seen, and 
truthfully reported and registered, all of the im- 
mediate or sensibly demonstrable facts or, as they 
are otherwise termed, phenomena, which alone are 
presented within its chosen field of observation and 
which alone constitute the subject-matter of its 
inquiry. But these facts are knowable and observ- 
able only in and through certain relations — not as 
purely isolated and separate facts. And the rela- 
tions, in and through which they are known, are all 



166 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

relations of space and time, of co-existence and 
sequence, or of "configuration and motion." These 
relations, once determined and expressed, are recog- 
nized and described as "rules," " or laws." The re- 
lations are mechanical relations; for it belongs to 
the very essence of a mechanical relation to be a 
relation of and in time and space. They are, I 
repeat, relations, rules, or laws of co-existence and 
sequence. How useful, nay, how necessary, for a 
prosperous material existence and so, indirectly, for 
the higher ideal prosperity of mankind, the ascer- 
tainment and knowledge of these rules is — this is 
something on which I need not stop to enlarge. 
About it there can be no question; but, also, this 
is not the point now in question for us. Our present 
need is only to have before us a clear conception of 
the intrinsic nature and scope of "pure physical 
science " as such, and then to perceive that with 
the method by which the results are reached, and 
with the particular nature of the results themselves, 
neither philosophy nor religion has any sort of im- 
mediate concern. Physical science ascertains what 
are the precise sensible facts that fall within the 
realm of her inquiry, and it is not these facts, with 
their mechanical laws, that concern philosophy and 
religion, but the interpretation and comprehension 
of them, with reference to their deeper significance. 
Their concern is, not with the immediate phenom- 
ena, but with the reality which the phenomena 
denote. The interest of religion in this respect is 
more indirect, but not less vital and real, than that 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 167 

of philosophy. For, that other science of the phys- 
ical universe, of which I made mention above, is 
an essential part of philosophy itself, and may be 
termed the Philosophy of Nature. This is the 
science which inquires respecting the essence and 
foundation of natural, or, "physical," existence, and 
respecting the real significance, the origin and end, 
of nature's laws or "rules." 

More especially, nature, or the physical universe, 
is never at a standstill. It is involved in ceaseless 
and — even where the first appearance seems most 
to prove the exact contrary — in absolutely universal 
change or motion. Further, the various particular 
motions in the universe are not severally isolated 
and separate from each other. On the contrary, 
they constitute a system, in which each part implies 
and depends on every other. They constitute a 
whole, and their several movements combine in one 
grand collective movement, respecting the law and 
significance of which intelligence requires and de- 
mands illumination. It is in the attempt to answer 
the question thus raised that physical science, on 
the side of its widest generalizations, and philoso- 
phy approximate most closely to each other, and it 
is here that the complementary nature of the rela- 
tion, which really subsists between physical science 
and philosophy (or that part of philosophy which is 
termed philosophy of nature) is most conspicuously 
illustrated. What, namely, the "law" in question 
is, or what is that grand and all-comprehensive law 
which, as a visible rule of order among phenomena, 



168 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

includes all other more special laws and is illustrated 
in them all, — this is a question, the answer to which 
may and must be sought in accordance with the 
method, and without going beyond the peculiar 
sphere, of physical science itself. For it is a ques- 
tion relative to the temporal, and indirectly the 
spatial, order of phenomena. That is to say, it is 
a question concerning something which in kind is 
susceptible of sensible, and only of sensible, demon- 
stration. It is a question of historic fact. But be- 
yond the demonstration of the law as an immediate 
fact — a rule of temporal order — physical science, as 
such, is not competent to advance one step. Here 
it is met by the natural ontological limitations, 
which bound its peculiar sphere. Just as, in virtue 
of these limitations, pure physical science strictly 
demonstrates and knows no material substance, but 
only, instead, figured space, and no real or sub- 
stantial force, but only motion, so, in the matter 
of the mechanism of spatial and temporal relations 
among phenomena, it demonstrates and knows only 
the fact of this mechanism, the fact of these special 
and general laws of order, but nothing respecting 
their ulterior significance. It, as such, cannot say 
by what power, from what source, or to what ration- 
al end, this moving mechanism exists, or whether 
indeed it exists by any power, or from any source, 
or to any end whatsoever. It cannot say this, be- 
cause its eye is methodically turned away from all 
such things as power, source, and end, or (in brief) 
ultimate and absolute reality. From all these things 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 169 

pure physical science abstracts, by the very act by 
which, choosing for its own peculiar sphere and sub- 
ject-matter the realm of sensible phenomena as 
such, and choosing its method accordingly, it re- 
solves not, and renders itself positively unable, to 
attend to or to see any thing else. These limita- 
tions — it need hardly be said — are not the fault, but 
rather the merit, of physical science; they are not 
to it a mere check or hindrance, but rather (as the 
history of science has shown) the conditio sine qua 
non of its prosperous existence. But when they are 
forgotten, and when men, speaking ostensibly in 
the name of physical science invoke her authority 
in support of opinions respecting that which lies 
strictly beyond her purview, then the reign of mere 
opinion, or rather of positive confusion and error, 
sets in. Nay, I will even say that then it is when 
that intellectual sin called "anthropomorphism," 
and which to so many men now-a-days seems to 
be the only unpardonable one, stands in most dan- 
ger of being committed, and with most dangerous 
results. For instance: When, from the circumstance 
that to pure physical science, as such, with its pe- 
culiar and self-imposed limitations, no ultra-phe- 
nomenal or sub-phenomenal, i. e. } no non-sensible, 
reality is or can be known, it is inferred and declared 
that no such reality is in any way known or know- 
able, then the reign of intellectual confusion — other- 
wise termed sophistry — begins and, in proportion 
as the declaration is credulously received by a pub- 
lic destitute of critical information respecting the 



170 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

constitution of science, extends. Even were such 
declaration true it would not be so for the rea- 
son alleged in its support. But it is positively 
not true, unless human experience is an illusion 
and philosophic science, as the interpretation and 
exact demonstration of the content of that ex- 
perience, is all a myth. And no one, to say the 
least, can affirm with reason the truth of this last 
supposition, who shows himself destitute of the most 
elementary knowledge concerning the specific na- 
ture, methods, and results of philosophic science and 
only alleges, in support of his opinion, reasons which 
are in no sense germane to this science or to its pe- 
culiar subject-matter. 

But again: When, from the circumstance that phys- 
ical science finds, and so demonstrates, that the sen- 
sible universe, as such, is one vast and unbroken 
net-work of mechanical relations— relations (other- 
wise termed " laws ") of co-existence and sequence — 
so that in the one word " Mechanism " all the results 
and all the knowledge of pure physical science may 
be summed up, — when, I say, from this circumstance 
it is ostensibly inferred and is asserted, not only that 
mechanism is the highest and ultimate category of 
all knowledge and of all existence, but also that it is 
identical with a blind, all-compelling and all-com- 
prehending fate, then the intellectual sin of "an- 
thropomorphism " is committed. Physical science 
finds in nature, as contemplated by her, no fate, 
nor, as we have seen, any other power, whether real 
or fancied. The man of physical science, as a man, 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 171 

though not as a physicist — i. e., as one whose whole 
personal " experience," like that of all other men, 
never is, as matter of fact, or can be purely and ex- 
clusively " physical " — has at least an abundant prac- 
tical knowledge of 4< power," and confesses it. Nay, 
more, in the chosen language of his science he 
speaks — he finds himself compelled to speak — at 
every turn of " forces," just as though (so a super- 
ficial observer would say) he knew all about them. 
But such knowledge he, as physicist, disclaims, and 
explains that the word " force," in his scientific vo- 
cabulary, is without positive significance for him; it 
is only a non-significant part of his mechanism of 
expression, like an algebraic symbol, or, better, like 
the auxiliary verb employed in conjugation. It is 
unquestionably true, nevertheless, that in and through 
the mechanism of the sensible universe power is man- 
ifested. And the question as to the true nature of 
this power has to be taken up and answered by a 
science less abstract than physical science. It has 
to be answered by a science which does not, like 
physical science, abstract from the major and funda- 
mental part of experience, but considers experience 
on all its sides and in all its concrete fulness, the 
science which is par excellence and without qualifica- 
tion the science of experience as such, or Philosophy. 
The conception of universal mechanism, therefore, 
as it comes from the hands of physical science, car- 
ries with it no positive notion or knowledge of power, 
whether as fate or in any other form. The philo- 
sophic mechanist who, speaking professedly in the 



172 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

name of physical science, represents the case in a 
different light and declares, in particular, that the 
physicist's knowledge of mechanism is tantamount 
to the absolute, positive knowledge and demonstra- 
tion of an universal fate or blind automatism, by which 
not only the movements of nature at large, but also 
the self-conscious actions of men are determined, — 
this one, I say, is guilty, not only of logical fallacy, 
but also, in particular, of anthropomorphism. He 
views nature, not with the eyes of science, whether 
physical or philosophic, but with those of mere hu- 
man prejudice. He likens her, in effect, to an Orien- 
tal despot, whose irresponsible word or decree (fa- 
tum, " fate ") rides on pitilessly and unchangeably to 
its execution, in blind disregard, as well of all reason, 
as of the fears and entreaties and will of those whom 
it may affect. 

That which specifically concerns philosophy, then, 
is not the determination of nature's particular me- 
chanical laws; — this is the work of the special sci- 
ences; — nor of her universal mechanical law, — this is 
the task of pure physical science, considered on the 
side of its greatest generality; — but the ascertain- 
ment of the power, by whose presence and agency 
the mechanism of sensible phenomena is to be ex- 
plained. Philosophy looks for the inner reality, the 
controlling reason, and looks for this, not in an in- 
experimental vacuum of pure abstraction, but within 
the present and by no means inaccessible depths of 
man's real, concrete experience. And now it is all- 
important to note that the interest of religion, in this 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 173 

regard, is in kind identical with that of philosophy. 
Accordingly the Bible, as a text-book or manual of 
religion, is found to be in no sense a text-book or 
manual of the physical sciences. The special and 
general results of these sciences are not germane to 
the nature and purpose of religion. And those who 
have, in the supposed interest of religion, sought to 
find pure physical science in the Bible and to use 
what they have then professed to find for the purpose 
of controlling or forestalling the methods and results 
of inquiry in such science, have accordingly always 
come, and will unquestionably always in the future 
come, to grief. What religion presupposes with re- 
gard to the physical universe, and that, therefore, 
which, in this regard, must be true if religion is to 
be true, is not any dogma whatsoever respecting the 
general or special mechanical laws of nature, but a 
belief concerning the inner reality of nature, or re- 
specting the absolute ground and end, and the sub- 
mechanical law, of her existence and of her life. A 
question of essential interest and importance for re- 
ligion is, for example, not whether man is allied by 
evolutionary derivation to the other and so-called 
lower orders of animals, but whether such sayings as 
these are true, viz., " The Lord preserveth man and 
beast," and God " filleth all things." 

Hamann, the "Magus of the North," said of na- 
ture that it was, to intelligence, like a text written 
in Hebrew, without vowel-points; the work of 
intelligence was to find and supply the vowel- 
points and so render the text intelligible. In par- 



174 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ticular, this is the work of philosophic intelligence. 
The work which philosophy thus proposes to do, re- 
ligion supposes to have been already done. How, 
and with what general results, the task is undertaken 
and accomplished by philosophy, has been indicated 
in outline in a previous lecture. We have now to 
compare, with philosophy's reading of nature, the 
reading which is presupposed and demanded by relig- 
ion, and especially by Christianity. Only, we first 
add, by way of reminder, and as furnishing a fitting 
connecting-link between the thoughts that have just 
been occupying our attention and the considerations 
upon which we are about to enter, that philosophy, 
in connection with this conception and fact of uni- 
versal natural mechanism, — the consonantal " He- 
brew text," — which physical science demonstrates, 
does not forget that the word mechanism has an 
etymology, and that it is derived from a Greek word 
meaning "instrument," " engine," or "contrivance," 
and this meaning of the original, philosophy finds, 
is not lost in the derivative. Not only does mech- 
anism mean something that is purely instrumental, 
but the mechanism of nature is purely instrumental. 
Its essence is not fate, nor self-directing power, — 
though it implies or points to the latter. It is 
simply a dependent and inherently passive means. 
Mechanism philosophy finds to be but the dress or 
garb of organism, its instrument or necessary means, 
and also its product. The dead is at once the crea- 
ture and the servant of the living. And Life is 
energy, or self-asserting and self-maintaining reality, 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 175 

of Spirit. Where mechanism is, there is also or- 
ganism, there is living power, there is the power 
and purpose of Spirit. Mechanism is the sure, 
the ever-present sign of organic energy of intelli- 
gence. The former is phenomenal; the latter is sub- 
stantial; and it is only through her recognition and 
demonstration of the latter that philosophic science 
vindicates for nature her reality and her meaning, and 
saves her from vanishing away, for human intelligence, 
in that spectral dream of" subjective idealism " which 
necessarily results from any and every attempt to in- 
terpret nature in the light and with the aid of the 
mechanical categories of " pure physical science," and 
of these alone. Nature, for philosophy, is real; it 
shares dependently in the absolute reality, and only 
thus can it be truly and inherently real. It is real 
because, and so far as, there is present in it the living 
and substantial power of Absolute Spirit. It is indeed 
" relative," but that to which it is relative is God. 
Of its relation to God we may say, — using the in- 
adequate language of sensible analogies, — that the 
place of nature is in God, rather than that the place 
of God is in nature. The Lord, we may say, with 
the confident assurance that no violence is thus 
offered to the sense of Scripture, — the • Lord has 
been her dwelling-place in all generations. Some- 
thing of the precise meaning which such a statement 
has for philosophy's exact thought, you may catch, 
if you will recall the demonstration that philosophy 
furnishes of what is called the ideality of space itself. 
Space and time, which are the essential condition of 



176 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

all sensible existence and the substance of all mechan- 
ical relations, are shown, as you will remember, 
by the philosophic science of experience to be 
not themselves sensible objects, but dependent 
functions of Spirit. The place of space itself — if 
the use of this expression may be pardoned — is 
thus in spirit, and, speaking absolutely, in God. 
What is thus true of space and time, is necessarily 
true of those so-called sensible objects, whose ex- 
istence they condition, and of those mechanical 
relations of the sensible universe, whose essence 
they constitute. But this is no case of pantheistic 
"absorption," whether of nature in God, or of God 
in nature. By as much as the full, fundamental, 
and concrete conception of experience, both on its 
subjective and on its objective side, is the organic 
conception, and by as much as the definition of the 
relation of the relative to the absolute, or of nature 
to God, can result only from the philosophic science 
of experience in its fullest and completest sense, it 
follows that the pantheistic notion just mentioned 
has no rightful place in philosophic science. For 
this notion results only from the attempt to define 
the relation between God and nature with the use 
of none but mechanical conceptions, i. e., as we 
have seen, of conceptions which do not correspond 
to and represent experience and the object of ex- 
perience in their concrete fulness and reality, but 
are formed only through abstraction from all that 
is fundamental and of absolute significance in the 
realm of intelligent experience. Applying these 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE WORLD. 177 

conceptions, and these alone, no alternative is left 
but to regard the whole universe of existence as 
one vast mechanical aggregate, all of whose parts 
are — thus to express it — of the same ontological 
rank, both among themselves, and as compared 
with the whole of which they are parts. The term 
" God, or Nature," — to repeat the phrase which con- 
stantly recurs in Spinoza, — is then but the name 
for the whole aggregate of existence, considered 
on the side of its wholeness or totality. The 
ostensible relation between God and nature thus 
becomes one of abstract or literal, numerical iden- 
tity. The distinction between them is obliterated. 
But in this way both God and nature are changed, 
in our conceptions, from that which they were dem- 
onstrated to be into that which they are not. God, 
who was a Spirit, becomes only a name, and nature, 
whose reality was demonstrated to be a reality of 
spiritual power and purpose, is identified with the 
realm of her mechanico-sensible phenomena; the 
shell is taken for the kernel — ''abstracted" from 
the kernel. In one word, mechanical distinction or 
mechanical dependence involves no true ontological 
distinction. The terms or objects, between which 
a purely mechanical relation subsists, are, as such, 
of the same ontological nature, of the same " sub- 
stance," or, ontologically identical. God, standing 
in none but a mechanical relation to the world, and 
known or knowable only in such relation, were 
identical in nature with the world. But organic 
distinction and dependence is real, existential dis- 



178 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

tinction and dependence. The relative, in organic 
dependence on the absolute — nature, in organic de-~ 
pendence on God — exists and lives by and through 
the present power of the absolute, but is never- 
more capable of literal or immediate identification 
with it. It gets and keeps its true reality through 
concrete union with the absolute; by mechanical 
absorption in it — were this abstraction, for the rest, 
capable of being realized in thought — it would be- 
come unreal. Finally, the essence of the world and 
its relation being of the nature thus indicated, it is 
seen how and in what sense building men up in 
true intelligence is, as religion itself claims, the 
same as building them up in the knowledge of God. 
The finite bears on its face the evidence of the 
infinite, which is its active condition. The relative 
is through the indwelling power of the absolute. 
The true knowledge of the one involves at the same 
time knowledge of the other. All finite existence 
is, truly viewed and known, a Theophany. 

The Christian Scriptures, now, represent the 
world as dependent on God for its existence. It 
is, in its very essence, to God as the dependent to 
the independent, as the relative to the absolute. 
There is an Alpha of existence, an absolute order 
of ontological priority in the whole realm of being; 
and this Alpha is, not the world, but God. " In the 
beginning God created the heaven and the earth." 
4< Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever 
thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even 
from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God " (Ps. 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 179 

xc. 2). The world is, but its being is not absolute. 
The world, as distinguished from God, exists, not 
independently and by itself, or "from everlasting to 
everlasting," but in dependence on divine power. 
"He hath made the earth by his power" (Jer. x. 12). 
So much, then, is certain: the Scriptures regard the 
world as the dependent work of the divine power. 
But the more important question is, in what sense 
is the world the divine work? Is this work instan- 
taneous or continued? Did God, as a mechanical 
"First Cause," in one instant miraculously "make" 
the world and then separate himself wholly from it, 
leaving it to get on henceforth as best it could with- 
out him? Could and did he give it power to be in 
independence of him? What did God put into the 
world? Was it only "brute matter" and "blind 
forces?" Had he a reason for "creating" it? If 
so, what was and everlastingly is this reason, and 
what, consequently, is the absolute law of the world's 
existence? And, finally, has the world a predestined 
end, to which it tends; and, if so, in what sense is 
this true, and what is the end in question 1 ? 

It is obvious, without argument, that that is a 
thoughtlessly inaccurate and unjustifiable way of 
speaking of the divine work of creation, which those 
adopt, who represent it as resulting, so to speak, 
from the casual occurrence in the divine mind of a 
motive similar to the empirical motives, which are 
the immediate determining ground of most human 
actions. A man, for example, builds a house, and 
his motive or reason for so doing may be one of 



180 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

several. He may build it for his own shelter, or 
as a means of profitably investing his money, or, 
finally, simply because the ennui of idleness is 
unendurable and he feels that for his own happiness 
he must be busy about something or other. This 
last seems to correspond most nearly to the con- 
ception respecting God's reason for creating the 
world, which is involved in many popular represen- 
tations of the subject. The omnipotent Being had 
nothing to do, and so, rather than be eternally idle, 
concluded to "make" a world. He had all power 
and was alone in existence; he was therefore re- 
sponsible to no one for the use — if any — which he 
made of his power. It has even been expressly held 
by some theologians that he was not — if we may 
thus express it — responsible to himself, or to his own 
nature, for the way in which, and the result with 
which, his power was used. And so this hitherto 
" otiose Deity" resolved to busy himself for an in- 
stant, or at most for a few days, with the creation 
of a world; — which, accordingly, he did, with results 
in which, though there may be " rhyme," (t. e., order, 
otherwise termed law or rule), there is no "reason." 
The world, it is either practically or expressly held, 
is, and is such as it is, because it is. No reason, it 
is alleged, can be deduced from the divine nature or 
discovered in the nature of the world, for the ex- 
istence of the latter or for its possession of the char- 
acter which, as matter of fact, it does possess. If it 
is good, it is good because God "made" it, and not 
good per se; if it is in any sense rational, it is for the 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — THE WORLD. 181 

like reason(?), and not because its own nature or the 
nature of God discloses for it the slightest raison 
d'etre. The world and its laws constitute simply 
one vast though complex fact, and are to be ac- 
cepted purely as such. Moreover, whatever may be 
conceded as to their first origin, they are by very 
many " thinkers " treated as now constituting a fact — 
or realm of fact — which is independent, in existence 
as well as nature, of its source. The world, with its 
assumed blind forces and its so-called inflexible (z. e., 
automatically self-executing) laws, is practically or 
expressly conceived as now sufficient unto itself, any 
active connection with it and its affairs on the part 
of God, being resented as an impertinent and dis- 
turbing intrusion. Nay, more, the mechanical uni- 
verse comes to be looked upon as that, of whose 
real and practically independent existence alone a 
disciplined intelligence can have the fullest assur- 
ance; while the admission of God as a quondam or so- 
called " First Cause" is greeted as a great and most 
edifying concession to the claims, not of religious 
and philosophical knowledge, but of religious feeling 
or, as it is even also called, the " religious conscious- 
ness " of man (and especially of unscientific men). 2 

All this is a travesty upon philosophic intelligence, 
as it is also a profanation and degradation of true 
religious conceptions. This is one of the most de- 
praved and senseless forms of agnostic and pseudo- 
scientific "anthropomorphism." Philosophic science 
shows that the very root-conception of being — when 
this term is understood in its concrete sense — is 



182 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

activity. Absolute being is absolute activity, ab- 
solute doing. Whatever absolutely is, and in pro- 
portion as it absolutely is, performs a work; or, at 
all events, a work is performed or goes on in it; so 
that its existence depends on the work. The activ- 
ity therefore, ceasing, the reality also ceases. If 
philosophy knows anything, it knows that the activ- 
ity of the Absolute is itself absolute. Its activity is 
perfect. In Aristotelian phrase, we may say that 
the activity, and, consequently, the being, of the 
Absolute is perfect, because it never leaves, for an 
instant, any of its potentialities unrealized; and it is 
precisely in this that the pure, unqualified, and infi- 
nite being of God, the absolute Spirit, differs from 
the finite being, of his dependent creatures. In 
short, absolute being is — more concretely expressed 
than before — absolute Spirit, and absolute Spirit is 
absolute life, energy, work: the Absolute accom- 
plishes, and only realizes its own being on condition 
of its accomplishing, an absolute work. And the 
conception of the divine nature which is presented 
to us in the Christian Scriptures differs in no respect 
from this. It was precisely the Hebrew prophet's 
sense of the ever-wakeful — nay, let us rather say, 
the absolutely wakeful — activity of the Maker of 
heaven and earth, which gave their tone of con- 
scious irony to the words with which he " mocked " 
the prophets of Baal, saying to them, respecting their 
(anthropomorphic) god, " Peradventure he sleepeth, 
and must be awaked " (i Kings xviii. 27). The same 
thought inspired the Psalmist's comforting declara- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 183 

tion: "He that keepeth thee will not slumber" (Ps. 
cxxi. 3). And so, too, the Christ, whose name is 
called " Emmanuel, God with us," the Logos, the 
active and effective Reason, the substance-giver of 
the world, declared to those contemporaries of his 
who still retained the word of God only in the form 
of a dead letter, " My Father worketh hitherto, and 
I work" (John v. 17). " Hitherto; " not from a cer- 
tain time in the past, before which he was idle, but 
"hitherto" without qualification, i. e., eternally. It 
is as though Christ had defined God as par excel- 
lence the Worker, and himself as " equal with God" 
(in the language which his adversaries immediately 
thereafter proceeded to employ against him), the 
true Son of God and one with God, just because and 
only so far as he too worked, sharing in and work- 
ing the work of the Father. And, finally, man him- 
self, according to the Christian conception, fulfils 
the requirement to become "perfect" — i. e. y to be- 
come perfect man — and to that end becomes a 
"partaker of the divine nature," not in idleness, 
nor simply by working mechanically for God, but 
by being, in living, organic union, a colaborer 
with him. — For the rest, all that was shown in 
our last lecture concerning the philosophic and 
scriptural conception of God as Intelligence, Life, 
and Love, has so obvious and decisive a bearing on 
the point now in hand, that we need attempt to add 
nothing more in regard to it. 

I need only further remind you, once more, that 
what is thus true of God, as absolute Being, is also 



184 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

true, mutatis mutandis, of all relative or finite being. 
Of it, as of God, it is true that it is, only as it does. 
Its being is conditioned on its doing. Only, its 
"doing" is dependent, while that of God is inde- 
pendent. But, above all, the being of the relative 
or, especially, of the so-called physical does not 
consist in any dead abstraction such as that which 
is termed " mere matter." Just as mechanism is the 
dependent product, instrument, and garb of organ- 
ism, so, too, matter is nothing but the purely phe- 
nomenal product — the manifestation — of living, or- 
ganic, spiritual forces. It is incapable of being 
known as anything else, and as this it is as matter 
of fact known. 

Now, the Scriptures do not deal in abstractions 
(such as " mere matter" and "blind forces") how- 
ever natural and, in their proper sphere, legitimate 
these may be. Still less do they profess to reveal 
the independent and substantive reality of any such 
abstractions. The speculative — or, rather, the dog- 
matic — materialist can find no support for his fanciful 
doctrine in the Christian's scriptures, any more than 
in the results of real philosophic inquiry. 

Moreover, whatever we may yet find scriptural 
reason for holding true with reference to the relation 
of the world to the eternal "work" of God, there 
can be no doubt that the present relation of God to 
his work is represented as both active and incessant. 
It is living and, according to the conception which 
we have now formed for ourselves of the divine na- 
ture, godlike. It is a constant witness to the glori- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 185 

ous activity of the divine intelligence, life, and love. 
" Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it," says the 
Psalmist (Ps. lxv. 9). In language, that is dear and 
beautiful to every Christian heart, the Master of 
Christians assures them that their Heavenly Father 
feeds the fowls of the air and clothes in a glory su- 
perior to that of Solomon the lilies of the field. The 
processes of organic nature — in other words — do not 
go on of themselves alone, but in dependence on 
the present power and activity of the Lord of all. 
But the processes of organic nature are built up, as 
we know, out of processes, or on the basis of the 
so-called forces, of that which we are pleased to 
term inorganic nature. The power that sustains 
the former must therefore bear a like relation to the 
latter. And as motion, change, process, activity, 
is, according to the testimony of both physical and 
philosophic science, an universal category — a cate- 
gory of all finite existence, — it follows that nothing 
whatever in physical nature is withdrawn from that 
"operation" (^working) of the divine "hands," in 
giving praise for which the Psalmist declares that 
he will rejoice (Ps. xcii. 4. Pr. Bk. version). The 
works of nature, no less than those of grace, are, 
according to the truly philosophical view of Scrip- 
ture, not only "begun," but also "continued, and 
ended," in God. The " heavens " are not simply the 
finished " work " of his " fingers" ; they are also, and 
far more characteristically, the constant working of 
the divine hands. Their " fulness " is not their own, 
but God's. "Do not / fill heaven and earth? saith 



186 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the Lord " (Jer. xxiii. 24). Viewed by itself, as pure 
physical science views it, the physical universe re- 
veals itself, not as full, but empty, not substantial, 
but phenomenal. It can be viewed in its fulness 
only as it is viewed in God, the Absolute, who 
" filleth all in all." The world is rich, and not 
poor; yet not by its own power or in its own right; 
it is full of the riches of God (Ps. civ. 24). The world 
is a speech, uttered by day unto day, and by night 
unto night. And the alphabet of this speech is 
adapted to spell out but one name, and that one 
not the name of the world, but of God, whose name 
alone is, in King David's language, " excellent [z. e., 
conspicuous, and full of substantial significance] in 
all the earth" (Ps. viii. 1). " That thy name [and 
here ' name ' stands for the person, the being, sig- 
nified by the name] is near [not in the remote and 
inaccessible distance of a mechanical 'First Cause'], 
thy wondrous works declare" (Ps. lxxv. 1). And 
they that know this name, with all that it signifies, 
will put their trust in God (Ps. ix. 10). For this 
name stands for a "goodness of the Lord," of which 
the earth is declared to be full (Ps. xxxiii. 5). It 
stands for universal beauty: " He hath made every 
thing beautiful in his time" (Eccl. iii. 11). It stands 
for a majesty of divine glory, of which heaven and 
earth are full {Te Deum, and Ps. lxxii. 19). It stands 
for the mercy, of which the earth is full (Ps. cxix. 
64), for the power by which the earth is made, the 
wisdom by which the world is established, and the 
discretion by which the heavens are stretched out 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 187 

(Jer. x. 12, and Prov. iii. 19). It stands, in short, 
for the eternal and alone absolutely and independ- 
ently substantial Spirit, who hath stablished the 
heavens for ever and ever, and hath made a decree 
— a system of "laws" — that shall not pass (Ps. 
cxlviii. 6); from whose presence nought can flee 
away, except it were into nothingness, since it is in 
him, who is in all and through all, that all things 
live, and move, and have their very being; and whom 
all his works, not only " shall," but do y " praise " (Ps. 
cxlv. 10, and Ps. cxlviii.) 

Such being the world, the knowledge of it is not 
something to be shunned, but to be sought out by all 
them that take pleasure therein (Ps. cxi. 2). The 
so-called "atheism of science" is not the atheism 
of science, but only, at most, the non-theism of 
partial science; and that " love of the world," which 
a Christian Apostle declares to be incompatible 
with the love of God, is not the love of the world 
as it is known to complete, i. e. } philosophic science 
and as the Christian scriptures also conceive and 
describe it; it is not the love of the world in its full 
and concrete and true reality, but of that abstrac- 
tion which men have before their minds when they 
think of the world on the side of its apparent differ- 
ence or separation from, and independence of, God. 
And — let me remark again right here — pantheism, 
too, that peculiar and just horror of the religious 
mind, consists, not in finding God, the true God, or 
God as absolute and eternal Spirit, in all things, 
but in first forming one's conception of the absolute 



188 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

after the analogy of things as they appear when 
God, as just denned, has been abstracted from, and 
then calling this false and insubstantial absolute 
after the reverend name of God. 

For indeed — and this now brings us to the dis- 
tinct recognition of another aspect of the world, 
which secular science confirms and which is also 
included in the Christian conception of the world — 
it is also one of the characteristic things about the 
world, that it can be looked upon apart from God, 
abstracting from God. And this possibility is to be 
regarded as founded, not in any peculiar and acci- 
dental infirmity of human intelligence, as distin- 
guished from some real or fancied ideal of absolute 
intelligence, but in the nature of the world itself. 
If the world, considered ontologically, or on the 
side of its absolute reality, is founded in and bears 
witness only to God, — or, if the world has a side 
by which it is pro tanto, or according to the measure 
of its being, in organic union with God, — yet no less 
truly, and no less characteristically, it has another 
side of difference from God and even of opposition 
to him. It has a side of corruptibility and change. 
By the world, thus regarded, we understand espe- 
cially the whole realm of the so-called phenomenal, 
the relative and finite, as such, and more particularly 
the whole realm of things which are specifically 
characterized by their subjection to the forms and 
conditions of space and time. The universal and 
inherent destiny of such things is, not to abide for 
ever, but to pass away. They are a vesture which 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 189 

shall be changed (Ps. cii. 26). This is, in reference 
to the physical universe at large, that " corruption 
of the creature," of which the apostle speaks; this 
is its ''subjection to vanity" (Rom. viii. 20, 21, and 
Eccl. i.) " They shall perish, but thou shalt en- 
dure " (Ps. cii. 26). Surely, the world is not God. 
And, yet, is then all God's work for nought ? Is it 
indeed to be wholly lost, and not, the rather, saved? 
Is there no well-grounded ''expectation of the crea- 
ture ? " Does the whole creation groan and travail 
in pain (Rom. viii. 22), in the vain hope of a birth 
that shall never be ? 

These questions bring us again face to face with 
the broader question concerning the rationale of 
creation, which we have already propounded, and 
the distinctively Christian answer to which we must 
now consider. The Christian doctrine of creation 
is inseparably connected with the doctrine of the 
Trinity or of God as Absolute Spirit and especially 
with the doctrine respecting the nature of the Christ, 
as the second person therein. The New Testament 
scriptures specially connect the existence of the world 
with the second person of the Trinity. "The worlds 
were framed by the word of God," — thus we read in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 3). The initial 
words of the Old Testament, "In the beginning 
God created the heaven and the earth," are re- 
peated, as we may say, in an amplified and explan- 
atory version, in the opening verses of the Gospel 
According to St. John. " In the beginning was the 
Word." " All things were made by him." " He 



190 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

was in the world, and the world was made by him, 
and the world knew him not." And so, in the first 
verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read again 
that God " hath in these last days spoken to us by 

his Son by whom also he made the worlds." 

It is this Son who, in the following verse is repre- 
sented as " upholding all things by the word of his 
power." The divine Word, then, or "the eternal 
Son," is set before us in the distinctively Christian 
conception of the subject as the direct and especial 
principle of the world's existence and subsistence. 
But he is represented as being this in no merely 
mechanical and external fashion. The notion of 
mere fabrication is even further removed from the 
New Testament conception of creation, than from 
that apparently contained in the Old, by as much 
as the former is more explicit than the latter. Not 
only in its origin, but also in its end, and in all its 
destined historic fortunes, the world is represented 
as standing in the most constant and intimate rela- 
tion to the Divine Son. He is its heir: him hath 
God "appointed heir of all things" (Heb. i. 2). The 
apparent bankruptcy of the world is no loss; it is the 
enrichment of Christ, of the Son, — the fulfilment of 
the divine Word. 

The "perishability" of things — their changing, 
apparently evanescent nature — which to a purely 
sense-conditioned science seems to constitute their 
whole nature — is not their whole truth. To mechan- 
ical sense the entire universe, with all its significant 
richness of developed detail, is but so much world- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 191 

dust, without inherent rationality, life, or purpose. 
This is but the symbol of existence, not existence 
itself; or, more truly, it is but the symbol of a poten- 
tiality of existence, the active principle of whose re- 
alization is not to be found in "world-dust" as such. 8 
Nature is thus viewed in abstraction from that in- 
ward process of an ideal, self-realizing life, which, 
to the more comprehensively and completely experi- 
mental eye of reason, or of philosophic intelligence, 
constitutes her real essence and meaning. For com- 
plete science, then, and for religion, whose genuine 
instinct is the instinct of life and of essential reality, 
the whole truth about nature is summed up, not in 
any such conception of a purely phenomenal product, 
or atomically-constituted "element," as is "world- 
dust," but in the conception of an organic, living 
and purposeful process, the total significance of which 
is summed up in the phrase, "realization or fulfil- 
ment of the divine Word." In the accomplishment 
of this process — the writing of this wonderful and all- 
significant Language of Nature — the atomic world- 
dust serves but as an insubstantial mechanism of 
alphabetic symbols. The constitutive source and 
essence of the process, and its causal principle, are 
found in the eternal Word, Life, Power, Spirit, among 
Avhose "treasures of wisdom and knowledge" are in- 
cluded all the thoughts that Nature strives to utter. 
In brief, then, and employing the experimentally 
accurate language of Aristotle, natural existence is 
a compound of potentiality and actuality; or, more 
strictly, every natural existence is involved in a pro- 



192 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

cess, whereby a definite, typical, ideal potentiality pro- 
ceeds towards its own realization. 4 In the Scriptures 
the living and all-controlling source and end of all such 
processes is declared to be, not a blind, impersonal, 
brutely persistent force, — still less, an " unknowa- 
ble" one, — but the living, personal, spiritual Logos, 
who is nc*t only knowable, but is also the very prin- 
ciple of intelligence and of all knowledge. By Him, 
in organic dependence on Him, the potentialities of 
nature are realized or, in scriptural language, "re- 
deemed," or " saved." 

Thus, then, the true process or history of the uni- 
verse is not one of bankruptcy, but of rescue, of 
redemption, of realization. This is expressed in 
Scripture as follows: "All things are of God," and 
" God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto him- 
self" (2 Cor. v. 18, 19). "Reconciling the world," 
says the Apostle; and then, as if this statement 
were not sufficiently explicit, we find him declaring 
still more roundly and expressly, in another Epistle, 
that it pleased the Father by Christ "to reconcile 
all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they 
be things in earth, or things in heaven" (Col. i. 20), 
to the end " that nothing be lost." The process of 
the world, I repeat, is a process of redemption. 
The conception of redemption is a cosmical con- 
ception. That life of the world, for which, in the 
profound symbolism of Scripture, the Christ is repre- 
sented as giving up his own, is a life through re- 
demption. The very reality of the world, its sub- 
stantial being — and this, as we have seen,, is by no 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 193 

means identical with its merely phenomenal, sensible 
quasi-being — and its substantial significance are a 
reality, being, and significance in and through re- 
demption alone. Viewed in separation from the 
Redeemer, by whom alone they " consist" (Col. i. 
17), all things are indeed nothing worth, and vanity. 
Their very essence is, not to be, but to perish. This 
is that irony of "fate" which rests on all things 
temporal, so far as they are viewed only as tem- 
poral or subject to the form of time. It is from this 
point of view that, in Goethe's " Faust," Mephisto- 
philes, "the Spirit of Negation," can say with truth, 

"Alles, was entsteht, 
1st werth, dass es zu Grunde geht." 

(The due of every thing, that originates in time, 
is that it perish. Or, in other words, the substan- 
tive value and significance, nay, the very being of 
all that has its origin in time and is considered only 
as it is subject to the law of time, must and can be ex- 
pressed only in symbols preceded by a minus sign; 
its very being, thus viewed, is a piece of irony; for it, 
as suck, to be, is to cease to be.) And it is because 
this point of view is not the only one, it is because it 
is the point of view of relative and partial, and not of 
complete and absolute, science or knowledge, that 
the next words of Mephistophiles are wholly false: — 

"Drum besser war's, dass nichts entstiinde." 

(It were better, therefore, that nought should 
originate in time.) But philosophy and religion, 



194 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

whose point of view is precisely this larger one of 
completed knowledge, respectively demonstrate and 
declare a more excellent truth about the world. 
The declaration of religion is that " all things were 
created" not only " by him," but also "for him" 
(CoL i. 16). All things, therefore, in consisting by 
the Son (ib. 17), i. e., in having their very being and 
reality by him, are not merely so many independent 
and finished products, with which his workmanship 
has nothing further to do. No, they really "con- 
sist," only as they are, through a continuing process, 
rescued or redeemed from this state of apparent in- 
dependence and indifference in relation to their 
creator and are indeed " for him." Nothing is, 
which does not in some true sense live, and nothing 
truly lives, which does not "live unto God." The 
temporal is real, only as far as it bears the form or 
image of the eternal. "Creation" is not the com- 
munication of bare independent existence in time. 
Such " existence" is a bare and unreal abstraction. 
Creation is the giving and sustaining of life. In 
short, "creation" is not merely "creation" by; it 
is also " creation for." It is not instantaneous and 
transitory, but progressive and continued; it is not 
a dead and mechanical process, but living and or- 
ganic; and creative work is, in its very essence, re- 
demptive work. 

We have yet only to see how the "reason" for 
this work, as a work progressing and continuing in 
time, is founded, according to the Christian concep- 
tion, not in any casual, empirical impulse or deter- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 195 

mination on the part of him, the essential and con- 
stitutive process of whose nature, being non-temporal, 
is exalted above time and is eternal, but in this very- 
nature itself. We have to see how creation, as a 
temporal process, is grounded in creation as an 
eternal process. 5 

In the same breath, in which St. Paul declares 
Christ to be "the image of the invisible God," he 
also calls him "the first-born of every creature" 
(Col. i. 15). Christ, the creator of all things, is 
thus himself represented as first or chief of things 
created. He is not merely the maker, but also the 
head of the creation. Man is accustomed to think 
and speak of himself as the head and the quintes- 
sence of the created universe; and so, from a certain 
point of view, he may do with perfect right. But 
the head of man himself, the " Son of Man," the 
Man par excellence, is the " Son of God." Of man, 
considered not simply in his distinction from and 
above all other orders of created existence, but as 
the microcosm, in whom the essence of all orders 
of created existence is summed up, Christ is the 
elder brother. Christ is the "only-begotten Son of 
God," according to the powerful and significant 
symbolism of Scripture. But this generation of 
the Son is not represented nor to be conceived as 
having occurred " once on a time." It is not a 
temporal act, but an eternal one; it is a part of 
that eternal doing, wherein the eternal being of 
God, the Absolute Spirit, consists. And its result 
is an other than God (" the Father,") and yet an- 



196 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

other that is God's own Other, in whom God's own 
fulness is made to dwell; in whom, therefore, God 
realizes or manifests himself; and on whose part, 
by a further consequence, it is no robbery that he 
make himself equal with God. It is an Other, which 
is rescued or redeemed from the quality and condi- 
tion of pure otherness (distinction from and opposition 
to God) in that eternal process of the divine Intelli- 
gence and Love, of which, in our imperfect, because 
sensibly conditioned, way of speaking, we may with 
equal reason say that it is at once condition and re- 
sult. It is an- Other which, as representing the 
place of the "object" in the divine intelligence and 
love, is — as shown by an analysis in a previous lect- 
ure — not simply distinguished from the subject of 
this intelligence and love, but is also, in proportion 
to the perfection of these functions in God, made 
inherently one with the " subject " (or with God the 
"Father") in the concrete unity of an absolute, 
triune life. The process of the divine nature, then, 
which is really signified for us by the word Trinity, 
is in kind a process of creation and redemption. 
Only, this process is not a finite process. It is not 
a process in time. It is not subject to the law and 
conditions of time. It is not a developmental pro- 
cess, advancing from stage to stage of relative in- 
completeness and imperfection before it becomes 
perfect and complete. No, it is the process which- is 
the eternal condition of all time, as it also is of all 
creation in time. It is an absolute process and is 
eternally complete. It is, I repeat, the process of 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 197 

the divine and absolute Love, which ceasing, all 
Being also ceases. 

Creation and redemption, then, in the very largest 
and deepest sense of these terms, — creation and re- 
demption, two names for one fact or process, — 
express the eternal nature of God in his concrete 
unity, of God as Intelligence, as Life, or as Love, of 
God as triune, — in short, of God as Absolute Spirit. 
They express this nature; their " reason" is this 
nature. And so Christ is for us " the image of the 
invisible God," not as viewed in abstraction or sep- 
aration from the world, but only in relation to it, as 
its Creator and Redeemer. Hence to ask why he 
should create the world amounts to the same thing 
as asking why Christ, the eternal Son, should be the 
image of the invisible God; and this, again, would 
be the same as requiring us to retrace once more 
the steps of demonstration which we have already 
twice trod. The Son, who is "the image," is "with 
God," and "is God." For him to be, i. e., to be the 
image of the invisible God, is to create and redeem; 
and precisely the same truth is expressed in the 
statement that his being is Love. But, it will be 
said, in creating the world God in Christ gives con- 
tingent, time-conditioned existence to things which 
in form and apparent substance seem contradictorily 
opposed to him; nay, more, the men whom he has 
formed are capable, it will be said, of openly and 
consciously resisting and denying him. Without 
stopping to remark on the qualifications, with which 
alone the statement of these facts by the objector 



198 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

can be accepted, the answer to them (substantially 
in another's phrase) is simply that it is indeed only 
God, or Absolute Spirit, who can endure this con- 
tradiction against himself, within himself, i. e. y within 
the realm of his own intelligence, love, and power. 
And he can do it, nay, he must do it, because of the 
glorious love that constitutes his very being. Of 
his absolute love the statement is true without 
qualification that it hath respect unto the lowly. 
The more it can give, the more perfectly does it 
demonstrate at once its riches and its unbounded 
perfection. The lower it can descend, the more 
perfectly does it realize its own nature and show it- 
self indeed godlike. The absolute love of God must 
descend to an absolute depth, and there is no grade 
of existence so poor and mean, but that God, as 
love, can and must create and redeem it. Think 
the world out of existence, and you set effectual 
limits to the Absolute, as Christianity conceives it, 
— i. e.y to the absolute Love. 6 

Is then, it will be asked, the creation and conse- 
quent existence of the physical universe without 
beginning or end ? Here a distinction must be 
made. Ancient and modern theories of ''evolu- 
tion," or of the temporal history of the universe, 
have made us familiar with the conception of aeons 
in that history, or of "ages," during each of which 
the physical universe is held to pass, from an initial 
state of universal homogeneity, into and through a 
series of states of, first increasing, and then decreas- 
ing, ' heterogeneity, until at last it returns to its 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 199 

original homogeneous condition, — then to begin 
anew and repeat the same round as before. If we 
accept this conception, the account of creation 
given in the Book of Genesis may be — as it has suc- 
cessfully been — interpreted as an account of the 
successive steps of development or creation in the 
present aeon. " In the beginning" may thus mean 
only in the beginning of this aeon. But when, on 
the contrary, Christ is said in the New Testament 
to have been in the beginning with God and as 
Creator to be " before all things," the sense is cer- 
tainly different. The relation here expressed is that 
between the Creator and the created, as such. He 
who is thus in the beginning of, or " before," all 
things, is this, not as the temporal, but as the non- 
temporal or eternal and ideal prius of all things. 
He is prior to them, as the condition is prior to — . 
while at the same time and in the same degree it is 
contemporaneous with — that which is conditioned. 
"All things" means whatsoever has for its nature to 
be within time, to be bounded by time, to be subject 
to the form of time as such. " All things " are, in 
technical phrase, the " content of time." Now, just 
as the content of time, abstracting from time itself, 
is nought (i. e., is an impossibility), so time, abstract- 
ing from its content, — or, time without any content, 
— is nought. Whenever time is, then " things" are, 
or the "physical universe," in one state or another, is. 
If time is without beginning or end, then the same 
must be said, apparently, of the divine work of 
world-creation. But time is something which is 



200 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

conditioned, and which has its eternal condition in 
the eternal, that is, in God himself. There is there- 
fore no reason for setting limits to its extent, 
whether in the past or in the future, and conse- 
quently no reason for setting similar limits to the 
work of cosmical "creation." In vain do we seek to 
put a limit of this or any other kind upon the Abso- 
lute. Philosophy repudiates the attempt, and the 
Christian religion, certainly, is not guilty of it. 

But, you may again ask, is not the foregoing ex- 
position of the scriptural conception of creation 
"pantheistic"? I have by implication already an- 
swered this question. Here let it suffice to say 
that it is indeed on the one hand, the scriptural 
Christian view that God must be "all in all:" but 
that also, on the other hand, it is only this view 
— which in so far perfectly coincides with the 
demonstrations of philosophy — that really and ef- 
fectively excludes the pantheistic conception. Pan- 
theism, as I have already twice indicated in this 
lecture, results only from an abstract or partial 
and essentially mechanical and sense-conditioned 
view of the world. It results from a view which, 
not being concrete and hence also complete, 
abstracts from spirit and its attributes, and re- 
duces the essence of all things to the abstract 
mechanical unity of an inherently undifferentiated, 
and absolutely homogeneous substance. Then in- 
deed all things are reduced to unity with a ven- 
geance, — with a vengeance, namely, that wipes out 
the whole significance of the characteristic differences 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 201 

of things among themselves and, especially, of the 
difference between the relative and the absolute. 
Then indeed all is "God," or, more truly spoken, all 
is nought, is essential vanity. But to the concreter 
and more complete view of Christianity, as also of 
true philosophy, while God is "all in all," yet all 
things are not absorbed in God, as in a numerical 
unity, nor is God simply merged in and dispersed 
among the plurality of dependent existences. The 
recognition of the experimental fact of the organic- 
spiritual dependence of the world on God puts an 
effectual barrier in the way of any attempted literal 
identification of the former with the latter, at the 
same time that it accords to the latter — to God — 
the sole occupancy of the throne of absolute being, 
and denies to the former — to the world — the possi- 
bility of possessing any substantial being that is not 
held in dependence on God. 

I only remark in closing that it must now prob- 
ably be sufficiently obvious both that, and why, the 
questions raised in purely scientific theories respect- 
ing the temporal order or history of the physical 
universe — theories of physical evolution, and the 
like — are destitute of substantial interest and im- 
portance for the mind whose specific point of view 
is that either of philosophy or of religion. Such 
theories are per se perfectly legitimate and perfectly 
harmless; and, so far as they are experimentally 
verified, they are to be unquestioningly accepted. 
They become false and justly offensive only when 
they are stretched — whether on the part of their 



202 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

authors or of their critics — beyond their true scien- 
tific meaning and made to do duty for that, from 
which they are specifically and totally different, 
namely, for the philosophy of nature. Whenever 
this is done, it is done on the basis of a false dis- 
tinction between what is called " nature and the 
supernatural." The natural and the supernatural, 
the physical and the metaphysical, brute or soul- 
less mechanism and living organism, matter and 
spirit, these all are set over against each other in 
a "hard and fast" opposition, the one being held, 
in each case, to be the contradictory opposite, and 
only the contradictory opposite, of the other. The 
partisan of "evolution" then becomes, not simply 
an "evolutionist" — i. e., a believer in the truth -of 
the law of evolution as an historic fact, — but a fatal- 
ist and mechanist in philosophy, who banishes the 
so-called supernatural, metaphysical, living, and 
spiritual from all his conceptions of reality. The 
unintelligent, but popular, critic of the mechanis- 
tic evolutionist, on the other hand, instead of cor- 
recting the error of his ostensible adversary, does 
really the rather perpetuate it, inasmuch as, while 
he nominally sets himself up for the defence of 
all that the mechanist denies, he yet also insists 
that the "supernatural" is distinct, and only dis- 
tinct, from the "natural"; that the former occupies, 
therefore, none but an essentially mechanical re- 
lation to the latter, and that, by a still further 
consequence, the power of the supernatural over 
the natural is only a brute power to "interfere" 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— THE WORLD. 203 

and by sheer might to direct, as from without. In 
this way the "supernatural" is degraded into an 
equality or identity of rank with the "natural"; 
and this is next door to pantheism, as above defined. 

The mechanist and his opponent alike thus deal 
only in abstractions. The truth of nature is the 
true "supernatural." Or, nature, viewed as purely 
" physical," is an abstraction. That this is so, phi- 
losophy demonstrates, and true religion presupposes. 

In sum, then, we find Christianity declaring, and 
philosophy assenting to and confirming the declara- 
tion, that all things live and move and have their 
being in God; but not that they constitute God. 



LECTURE VII. 

BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 

THE subject of this lecture is strictly continuous, 
though not identical, with that of the preced- 
ing one. Man is, on the one hand, part and parcel 
of the created universe. If, according to the con- 
ceptions reached in the last lecture, the direct result 
of all creative labor in the universe is not an im- 
mediately finished work, existing thenceforth in 
self-sufficient independence of its source, but ra- 
ther a divine possibility, which requires evermore 
to be redeemed from the vanity or emptiness of 
mere possibility by the incessant and universal act- 
ualizing energy of the absolute and divine Spirit, 
the same is also true of man. The nature of man, 
like that of the physical universe to which he be- 
longs, is bipolar or two-faced. On the one side, 
man, like physical nature, is subject to time and to 
its law of mutability and corruption, and is so repre- 
sented in the Christian Scriptures. "Man that is 
born of a woman, is of few days He Com- 
eth forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth 
also as a shadow, and continueth not " (Job xiv. 
I, 2). " Man being in honor abideth not: he is like 
(201) 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 205 

the beasts that perish" (Ps. xlix. 12). "The first 
man," i. e., man viewed according to his first or 
immediate appearance, "is earthy" (1 Cor. xv. 47). 
He is turned to destruction (Ps. xc. 3), and " goeth 
to his long home" (Eccl. xii. 5). "He cometh in 
with vanity, and departeth in darkness " (Eccl. vi. 4). 
This is the side by which man, like nature, is, so to 
express it, turned away from God or from absolute 
reality. This is the side of man's relative emptiness 
or pure phenomenality; — the side from which alone 
if we contemplate man, he, like nature, appears as 
an insubstantial " shadow." But man, as also na- 
ture, has another side, which, as we may say, is 
turned toward God. He is not altogether and only 
fleeting. He is not wholly swallowed up in the 
apparently all-devouring "maw of time." He has 
a side of reality which is exalted above the assaults 
of time; a side whereby he takes hold of God, the 
Absolute Reality, or, rather, whereby God takes 
hold of him, and wherein he, like nature, is sus- 
tained only by that creative-redemptive agency of 
God, which is the universal condition of all truly 
substantial finite existence. And so man is "part 
and parcel of the created universe." 

But, on the other hand, man has also his side of 
specific difference from and distinction above the 
universe that surrounds him. If in all things else a 
" divine possibility" is lodged, in him there dwells a 
still diviner one. If nature is, in the hands of her 
Creator, as the clay to be fashioned by a divine art, 
in man this art proposes to itself a still more won- 



206 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

derful work. While nature bears and reveals every- 
where the name of God, man is to be made in his 
express image. To this end man must be and is 
made to bear the image of the divine absoluteness 
and independence. Like God, he must be an inde- 
pendent "worker." Like him he must be and is 
a self-centred, self-conscious personality, and has 
within the sphere of his own being a precinct, in 
which his sway resembles by its absoluteness the 
sway of God. He must have, and he has indeed, a 
power of self-determination and a sphere for the act- 
ive exercise of this power. And this sphere, as just 
intimated, lies close at hand and is identical with the 
realm of his own self-conscious personal being. Here 
he has a personal, independent work to do. It is a 
work which it is impossible that another should do 
for him. It is a work, in the performance of which 
no one has any power to stay his hand, and to which 
also, on the other hand, no one can compel him. It 
is a work which bears the image of the creative-re- 
demptive work of God himself. For the work com- 
mitted to man's hands is none other than the realiza- 
tion, the rescue, the redemption, the salvation of the 
divine possibility that is lodged in him and is en- 
trusted, as a talent, to his keeping. "Work out your 
own salvation with fear and trembling" are the words 
that are addressed to him (Phil. ii. 12). In other 
words, the true and perfect being of man is depen- 
dent on his doing. He cannot be himself, or, man 
cannot indeed be man, by merely and inertly " ex- 
isting." Thus existing, he is man only in name and 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN 207 

in outward appearance. He is man only in semblance, 
but not in effective reality. He is as yet only the bare 
possibility of a man, and in order to be a man in fact, in 
order to have in him the reality of true human sub- 
tance, he must be up and doing. He must act. He, 
I say, and not another, must act. By his own self-con- 
scious, self-determining, purposeful activity, he must 
redeem and realize the divine possibility that resides 
in him. In order to be himself, he must create him- 
self. Thus is man in the image of God and like God. 
But only like God, not equal with him. The power 
lodged in earthen vessels, independent and godlike 
as it is, is not one that can separate itself absolutely 
from God, except to its own destruction. Its own 
initiative must be followed up and sustained by the 
power of God, or all its labor is worse than lost. 
And so it is that, while man is called on to work out 
his own salvation, he ha^s also the assured knowl- 
edge that God works in him both to will and to do 
of his good pleasure. The great glory of man, ac- 
cording to the Christian conception of him, is that 
he is a colaborer with God. In this consists the di- 
vinity of man. On the other hand, the pledge of 
man's possible success in accomplishing the work 
committed to him, lies in the circumstance that God, 
the Infinite Love, condescends to be a coworker 
with him. 

Such, stated in general terms, is the Christian 
conception of man. Such is the Christian idea of 
man's nature, on the one hand as compared with 
the nature of the created universe at large and, on 



208 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the other hand, as related to God and the divine 
nature. We may say that the greatest immediate 
practical interest of Christianity centres, and is by 
the Scriptures made to centre, in its conception, its 
theory, of man. Christianity is not, in its theory, 
merely a Theology. It is also, as we have seen, a 
Cosmology and, as we are about to see, an Anthro- 
pology. And my assertion is that, in the order of 
immediate practical interest, the anthropological 
element occupies the most prominent place. From 
this point of view we may say that the theology and 
cosmology are there for the sake of the anthropol- 
ology. They are there because no true and com- 
plete theory of man is possible without them, or 
because man cannot truly know himself or be made 
to know himself without taking into account as well 
the side of his unity with, as of his distinction from, 
both God and universal nature. 

Or, in still other words, the theory of the Christian 
religion is (among other things) essentially an eth- 
ical one. Ethics is, in the most comprehensive sense 
of these words, the Science of Man. Its province 
is to demonstrate and define the essential nature or 
character of man, — of man so far as he is " true to 
himself," i. e., so far as he is indeed man and not 
merely the semblance of man. The province of 
ethics, I say, is to demonstrate and define this, and 
also to demonstrate and define the law of practical 
activity whereby man realizes his true and essential 
nature or whereby man makes himself to be, and is 
indeed, man. This is ethical science, and nothing 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 209 

less than this is that theory of the Christian life which 
is taught both by precept and by amazingly per- 
fect example, in the Christian Scriptures, and most 
of all in those which are most distinctively Christian. 
We may say, as we are accustomed to say, with a 
relative truth that Christian ethics is especially the 
science of the Christian man or of Christian man- 
hood. But this mode of expression, notwithstand- 
ing its unquestioned relative justification and even 
its practical necessity, is nevertheless likely to mis- 
lead us, as indeed we know it does mislead thous- 
ands, into the false supposition that after all the 
so-called Christian man is only one among many 
possible and really existing kinds of men, the pe- 
culiarity by which he is distinguished from other 
men consisting in certain eccentricities of belief and 
practice, which are not essential and indeed have no 
relation to the constitution of intrinsic and perfect 
manhood; so that the Christian is not more, or more 
truly, a man than any one else; he is not the perfect 
man in kind, but only a man of a peculiar sort. And 
then, as we know, such plausible grounds for main- 
taining and perpetuating this singular view are fur- 
nished by the actual or apparent character borne 
by a considerable and conspicuous number of those 
who call themselves "Christians." One could al- 
most wish that the word Christian had never come 
into common use. Certain it is that this word does 
not belong to the common vocabulary of Scripture 
or of the ethics therein contained. There we are 
bidden to mark, not the "Christian," but the "per- 



210 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

feet man." The words of Jesus himself are an in- 
vitation and an exhortation to us to be, not "Chris- 
tians," but "perfect" (Matt. v. 48). And the like 
description belongs to the ideal set before us by the 
Apostles,, who drank deeply and immediately of the 
spirit of Jesus and all whose labor and instructions 
are to the end that those whom they address may 
simply be perfect men; that they may "be perfect 
and entire, wanting nothing" (James i. 4); and 
then — as showing wherein, particularly, the perfec- 
tion of man consists — that they may " stand perfect 
and complete in all the will of God" (Col. iv. 12); 
that they may be "perfect in Christ Jesus" (Col. i. 28); 
" till we all come," through " the knowledge of the 
Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of 
the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. iv. 13). 
He, the divine Man, in whom was found no sin, nor 
any defect, exemplified, in all its "fulness," the 
"measure of the stature" of the "perfect man"; and 
to the attainment of this stature the follower of 
Christ, in dependence on his "ready help," is called 
upon to aspire. 

The theory of what we are pleased to call the 
Christian life, as contained in the Christian Scrip- 
tures, and as constituting the substantial kernel of 
" Christian ethics," is then, ostensibly only a theory 
of the perfect life and of the perfect man; and the 
"laws" which it contains are the laws, in pursuance 
of which man is made or becomes, not perfect God, 
nor perfect beast, nor even perfect "Christian," but 
simply perfect man. Or, otherwise expressed, Chris- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN. 211 

tian ethics offers us the theory of the ''Christian" 
man and of the " Christian " life only because, and 
so far as, the term "Christian" is a synonyme for 
"perfect," and may be and is employed as a more 
concrete and hence more definite and expressive 
substitute for the latter. 

The Christian Scriptures, now, on the side of their 
ethical content, or as containing and illustrating the 
theory of the perfect man, are extremely rich. Heie 
nothing is conceded to, or advanced under the name 
of, " mere theory." In other words, the whole the- 
ory is strictly experimental and in so far complies 
perfectlyVith the requirements of a scientific theory. 
Its lessons are all taken from life. It teaches no 
doctrine of human corruption, or of the possible per- 
version and ruin of the divine possibilities resident in 
man, for which it is not able to offer in evidence an 
immediate, actual illustration. And it sets up no 
ideal of the perfect man, of which it is unable to illus- 
trate the practicability. Its great teacher is also its 
perfect exemplar and has only to say to his disciples, 
" Follow thou me." The further evidence of its truth 
is found in the circumstance that the genius of hu- 
manity has recognized itself in the picture drawn in 
the Christian Scriptures and, thus inspired, has gone 
about to realize itself in a civilization, which, whatever 
its deficiencies and how great soever its blemishes, 
contains in it far more of " man true to himself," or 
of genuine humanity, than has ever been witnessed 
in non-Christian centuries or under non-Christian 
climes. The "measure of the stature of the fulness 



212 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of Christ " has in practice been found to be the mea- 
sure of the stature of the perfect man. Through the 
knowledge of Christ man has come to the best knowl- 
edge of himself, and through the imitation of Christ he 
has, thus far, most successfully realized himself. But 
not only is this true. It is also true that, just as 
Christian theology — I employ this word here in its 
more literal or etymological sense, as denoting only 
doctrine of or about God — rather corrects and sup- 
plements, than contradicts and absolutely over- 
throws, the theology of the classic Greek philo- 
sophy, so Christian ethics, or the Christian theory 
of Man, rather completes and is confirmed by, than 
opposed to the best of non-Christian conceptions. 
God has not left man without the means of knowing 
himself, even in times and places not reached by the 
words of the Christian Scriptures or by the influence 
of specifically Christian ideas. And the part of wis- 
dom for the Christian teacher is, doubtless, not to 
forget this fact, nor to remain in ignorance of the ex- 
tent of its truth, but the rather to be in full and com- 
plete knowledge of it, and to make use of this knowl- 
edge, as well he may, for the purpose of demonstrating 
the fuller and deeper truth of the Christian conception 
of man. 

On the other hand, and from another point of 
view, there exist in our day peculiar reasons why 
the teacher of Christian ethics — and every Christian 
minister is called upon, in his peculiar way and 
place, to be such a teacher — should have a full 
and complete sense of the strictly experimental 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 213 

and theoretic truth of Christian ethics, considered 
as Science of Man, and should be prepared, upon 
occasion, to demonstrate the same. Whether with 
or without reason, there can be no doubt that, in 
the minds of a large body of influential men, — men 
whose sincerity of purpose and conviction is not to 
be questioned, and who occupy conspicuous positions 
in the world of science, — the impression prevails that 
the laws, ideals, and sanctions of Christian morality 
are not made for man as he actually is, nor dictated 
by a knowledge of the true and immediate nature 
of man and his relations. The morality of Christi- 
anity is held to be the morality of other-worldliness, 
i. e. y of man as an alleged denizen of an other, non- 
natural (or so-called " supernatural,") world, in which, 
as a matter of immediate experimental fact, he does 
not find himself existing, and of which he can know 
nothing except on the faith of an arbitrary and 
wholly unverifiable "revelation." The whole ob- 
ject of Christian morality, it seems to be thought, 
is to dehumanize man and to make of him, not a 
perfect man, but an angel, — i. e., something too 
good for this present world, and about which, for 
the rest, man must forever remain in substantial 
ignorance, so long as he continues to inhabit the 
earth. Christian ethics is thus viewed as a system 
of arbitrary " moral injunctions," in the form of 
" divine commandments," whose sanction and au- 
thority are derived exclusively from " their supposed 
sacred origin." I am now citing phrases employed 
by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the Preface to his " Data 



214 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

of Ethics." In view, now, of the fact that — accord- 
ing to Mr. Spencer's belief, and in his language — 
"moral injunctions are losing the authority given 
by their supposed sacred origin," this author holds 
that the "secularization of morals is becoming im- 
perative." What Mr. Spencer means, and what his 
followers believe that he has accomplished, by the 
"secularization of morals," is well expressed by one 
of his sympathetic Italian expositors, Prof. Traina, 
of Turin, who, in a recently published work, main- 
tains that "the modern method" — as he calls it, 
and of which he regards Mr. Spencer as the most 
illustrious living representative — has "humanized 
ethics." 1 The "secularization of morals," then, 
means the same as the "humanizing" of morals, and 
the demand for such secularization is equivalent to 
the demand that ethics shall be treated and cul- 
tivated as a science grounded in the living, actual, 
experimentally knowable nature of man. This de- 
mand, considered in the abstract, is surely perfectly 
justifiable, and ought to be quite unnecessary. For, 
if I have above correctly defined the subject-matter 
and scope of ethics, it is obvious that there can in 
no proper sense of the term be any science of ethics, 
which does not meet the mentioned requirement. 
But the demand in question is significant, if we 
may infer from the fact of its being made that the 
morality of Christianity is or has been currently 
set forth, by any whose office it is to expound and 
apply it, in such a manner as to convey to men 
who are not without intelligence, and who cannot 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 215 

be supposed capable of wilful and perverse intention 
to misrepresent, the impression that it does not 
deal with the real, inmost, and experimentally 
demonstrable nature of man, but is (in Spencer's 
phrase) " supernatural," i. e., as he understands this 
word, preternatural, and deals with presuppositions, 
laws, and ideals that are foreign to man as he really 
or actually is or can be, and are hopelessly remote 
from the sphere of human inquiry and demonstra- 
tion. If this inference is well-founded, there can 
be no question that the fact to which it relates is 
a real scandal; that the view indicated respecting 
the nature of Christian morality is a travesty upon 
" the truth as it is in Jesus "; and that it is immedi- 
ately and urgently incumbent on all those, whose 
special office it is to know and promulgate this 
truth, that they remove forever this rock of offence. 
For the rest, I have not here to enter upon a dis- 
cussion, on the one hand, of the extent to which 
occasion may really have been given for the fore- 
mentioned misapprehension of the true nature of 
Christian ethics, and, on the other hand, of the 
extent to which the quasi-philosophical presuppo- 
sitions of Mr. Spencer and his followers may have 
determined and unconsciously warped their own 
perceptions. Only, of this I am sure, namely, that 
whatever may have been, or may still be, the notion 
of Christian ethics conveyed by any class of pro- 
fessed Christian teachers, the conception of the 
nature of man and of the law of his perfect being, 
which is contained in the Christian scriptures and 



216 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

is essential to the Christian religion in its purity, 
is infinitely deeper, richer, and truer, and hence 
by so much more truly and genuinely "human," 
than any which has been reached by the so-called 
" modern method." 2 And this I venture to say in 
the name and with the authority of philosophy, 
whose "method" knows no distinction of "ancient" 
(or "antiquated") and "modern," and whose ideal 
is simply that of the complete recognition and 
demonstration of the whole content of experience. 
In distinction from the ethics of philosophy and 
Christianity, I venture to assert that the self-styled 
" scientific " ethics, which thus laudably aims and 
claims to "humanize ethics," abstracts in tendency 
and, to the greatest extent, in reality, from all that 
is most essential and substantial about man. In- 
deed, is it not the well-known and universal con- 
tention of the school in question, that only the 
phenomenal can be known by man, and that the 
absolutely real is forever unknowable ? Does not 
Mr. Spencer himself seek to persuade us that, not 
only all other existence, but also, in particular, our 
own is involved in impenetrable mystery ? Is not 
to him the very belief in " self," though inexpugn- 
able, yet wholly inexplicable and incomprehen- 
sible ? And so, the ethics, which corresponds to 
this view and to this " method," contemplates, in 
fact, rather the simulacrum of man, than man him- 
self, and sets before us rather the phenomenal and 
contingent than the substantial and eternal law of 
man's being. It presents us with just such a picture 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 217 

of man, as pure physical science gives us of external 
nature. Just as the latter does not penetrate into 
the inner being and spiritual reality of nature, but 
stops short with the ascertainment of her external 
phenomena and of their mechanical relations, just 
so, in theory, does the former proceed with regard to 
man. I cannot therefore but call it abstract, rather 
than concrete, ethics, " metaphysical," 3 rather than 
philosophical, and partially and superficially, rather 
than completely and deeply, experimental. And I 
say all this, without wishing to ignore — the rather, 
desiring fully to recognize and commend — all that, 
within its peculiar limits, has been solidly accom- 
plished for ethics by the followers of the "modern 
method." 

Let us return, now, to our main theme, and con- 
sider more in detail what is the Christian or Biblical 
conception of man, and of the law and condition of 
man's perfection. The general nature of this con- 
ception I have already indicated, at the beginning 
of this lecture. I have also indicated, in particular, 
that, in accordance with the proper and substantial 
sense of the word being, taken universally, man can 
be, and is indeed, truly himself only through an 
activity, whereby he actually realizes himself; that, 
by necessary consequence, antecedently to such real- 
ization man is but a "possibility," though a "divine" 
one; that the realization or "rescuing" of this pos- 
sibility depends on an activity, which, in its univer- 
sal nature, may strictly be termed creative and 
redemptive; and that to man, by virtue of his self- 



218 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

conscious personality, the direction of this activity 
is, under God, committed. All this, I say, I have 
indicated, with the intimation that it is in agreement 
with the fundamental conceptions of Scripture. 

What, now, we must first inquire, is the "possibility" 
in question ? What is the ideal of man, the specific 
type, or definable "nature," which, according to the 
view of Scripture, man must actively realize, in order 
to be man indeed, and not only in name, and in pro- 
portion only as he realizes which he is truly himself? 
The answer is simple and clear. Man is man only 
as he realizes in himself the image of God. He is 
perfect man only as his perfection resembles that of 
his " Father which is in heaven " (Matt. v. 48). But 
God is a Spirit; the perfection of man will therefore 
be characteristically a spiritual perfection. Is, now, 
man, so far as, realizing this perfection, he becomes 
truly man, an independent rival of God ? By no 
means. Not in separation from God — still less in 
opposition to or rivalry with God — but in living, or- 
ganic, effective union with him is man made perfect. 
The perfect man is a partaker of the divine nature 
(2 Pet. i. 4), a partaker of the Holy Ghost (Heb. vi. 
4), of the everlasting and absolute, divine Spirit. 
God is his inheritance, receiving which, and so first 
and effectively becoming a son of God, he first ac- 
quires the right to be called in downright and un- 
qualified fact a "son of man." Further, the condition, 
on which the realization of the perfection described 
depends, is an activity on man's part, — an activity 
of the spirit, founded on spiritual knowledge, subject 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 219 

to the will of God (which is but another name for 
the law of absolute being), supported by the activity 
of God himself, and manifesting itself in the " fruits 
of the spirit," the collective and all-comprehensive 
name for which is love, or " charity." And, finally, 
the fulcrum, the point of support, for this activity 
on man's part — the necessary resisting surface, so 
to express it — and the sphere for its manifestation, 
is the " flesh" and the " world." 

Each of these points we must now consider some- 
what in detail, proceeding from the last to the first. 

With respect to the negative side of man, or that 
which I have termed, in effect, the necessary resist- 
ant condition and the immediate place or sphere of 
his spiritual activity, comparatively little needs to 
be said. It is simply not true, as the critics of 
Christian ethics often seem to imagine, that Chris- 
tianity, or true religion, any more than true phi- 
losophy, abstracts, in contemplating man, from his 
surroundings and conditions in time and space, with 
a view to regarding him solely as the predestined 
denizen of a realm — a Kingdom of Heaven — which 
lies wholly beyond the realm of time and space and 
into which man cannot and must not enter here and 
now, if at all. The apparently contradictory state- 
ments of Scripture on this point are easily reconciled 
with each other and with the general order of truths 
demonstrated in these lectures. It is, thus, indeed 
true that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the king- 
dom of God:" " corruption " cannot "inherit incor- 
ruption" (i Cor. xv. 50). Yet it is also true that 



220 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the body of the true man is, here and now, a " tem- 
ple of the Holy Ghost" (i Cor. vi. 19), of the " living 
God" (2 Cor. vi. 16), and is, in "reasonable service," 
presented as "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 
unto God" (Rom. xii. 1). The state of the case is 
simply this: it is not by as much as man is flesh and 
blood that he inherits the kingdom of God; it is not 
by simple virtue of his physical constitution, as such, 
that man is or can be man, i. e., a living spirit; but, 
on the other hand, this inheritance is his, and he is 
such a spirit, not without the body: the latter is the 
necessary mechanical basis and instrumental condi- 
tion of man's spiritual self-realization and so of his 
present and immediate entrance into the kingdom, 
at once of God and of man. The relation is pre- 
cisely analogous to, though in- content much richer 
than, the one that we have already observed as 
existing in nature at large between what may be 
termed her outer and her inner sides, or between 
the ever-changing (and so inherently "corrupti- 
ble"), mechanical, physico- phenomenal garb or 
" first appearance " of nature and her permanent 
and inward, living, spiritual substance. To the 
very conception of nature — to the completely con- 
crete and experimental conception of nature — we 
found that the notion, the recognition, of the one 
side was just as essential as that of the other. 
From neither side was it possible to abstract except/ 
at the cost of rendering our conception of nature 
herself abstract, inexperimental, hollow, and dis- 
torted. The like is true with regard to man. Only, 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 221 

man is differentiated from nature in this, that, if I 
may thus express myself, his spiritual " filling" is 
richer than hers; it is more obvious, explicit, com- 
plete, and concrete. It is plainer that there is, in 
Job's words, "a spirit in man," than that there is 
one in nature. For, in nature, to employ an ancient 
figure, the spirit seems to sleep, while in man it is 
awake. In the former it seems unconscious, while 
in the latter it is self-conscious. In the one case, 
it appears as though it were seeking to hide itself, 
while in the other it comes clearly forth from its 
concealment. In short, that is only implicitly in 
nature, which is explicitly in man. The abstrac- 
tion, therefore, of which I spoke above, customarily 
and not unnaturally takes, when indulged, a differ- 
ent form or direction, according as the subject of 
consideration is nature or man. On the one hand, 
men, looking, through the glasses of pure physical 
science, at that side of nature which at first lies 
nearest at hand and seems most characteristically 
and obviously " natural," — viz., at the purely me- 
chanical and sensible side, — form a conception of 
nature as mere dead and automatic mechanism, 
devoid of living, spiritual substance. On the other 
hand, others, looking through the glasses of an 
equally one-sided and abstract " metaphysics," or 
of a misinterpreted " Christianity," at that side of 
man's nature which is most characteristically "hu- 
man" — viz., at its ideal-spiritual side — have formed 
the abstract, spectral, and inexperimental concep- 
tion of man as consisting, properly speaking, of 



222 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

nothing but a so-called "immaterial soul," out of all 
intrinsic relation to the body and its physical en- 
vironment, and to which the body and all physical 
conditions are rather a clog and burden than at 
once a necessary and a helpful instrument. Both 
of these abstractions are equally unphilosophical 
and irreligious; and, in particular, they are not 
scriptural. The Christian man — to confine our- 
selves now to the immediate subject of discussion 
chosen for this lecture — not only lives in the con- 
fident assurance that in his flesh he shall see God, 
but he also believes that he has seen and evermore 
sees the Word made flesh, God manifested in the 
flesh (i Tim. iii. 16), the invisible in the visible. 
Instead, therefore, of his regarding " the flesh," or 
" matter," and, in general, a physical constitution 
of things, as something inherently corrupt and pol- 
luting, something foreign to God and inimical to 
the perfect being of the spiritual man, he sees in it 
simply the language in which God speaks to man 
and the mechanism through which God manifests 
himself and so really and effectively is or exists for 
man. And so, too, he is compelled to see in the 
fact of his own participation, through his bodily or- 
ganization, in the physical constitution of things, 
not the evidence of a mistake on the part of his 
Creator, but rather proof of a gracious intention 
that man should, here and now, in the flesh, be a 
coworker with God, that he, too, should in his turn, 
through his life and activity in the flesh, speak to 
God (" Laborafe est orare") and, as in a reflected 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 223 

image, reveal him; and, in short, that through the 
due mastery and use of his "members" — not by 
ascetic neglect and mortification of them — he should 
at once develope and demonstrate his own spiritual 
nature and the true relation of his members to 
that nature, by rendering the latter " servants to 
righteousness, unto holiness" (Rom. vi. 19). The 
Christian rejoices in the leadership of a master, by 
whom not only the worlds were made, but who, 
himself incarnate, came, and, by his spirit, ever- 
more comes, into the world, not to condemn, but 
to finish and redeem and possess, his own work. 
He rejoices in the saying of that Master, " As I am, 
so are ye in the world." Not outside the world, not 
in some fancied, but as yet unrealized (and in fact 
inconceivable), state of existence in complete sepa- 
ration from a mechanical constitution of things, but 
" in the world," participating in its life and mastering 
its uses, does the perfect man, the spiritual man, the 
partaker of the divine nature, " possess all things." 
And even the future glory, which he anticipates, is 
subject to conditions of essentially similar nature. 
Then, as now, " all things " become his, not through 
their annihilation, nor by his absolute removal or 
separation from them, but through his and their 
"redemption," "salvation," preservation. 

The flesh, then, is given to man, in the view of 
Scripture, not that he may abandon and hate it, nor 
yet that he may identify himself wholly with it, but 
that he may, so to speak, the rather identify it, as a 
necessary instrument, with himself, through the 



224 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

normal and proper use of it. He, I say, must use 
it, and not allow it the rather to use him. It must 
be his servant, and not he its servant. To this end 
an activity is required on his part, an activity which 
proceeds characteristically from the spirit, and not 
from the body, and yet which, if I may so express 
myself, proceeds, not away from, but toward the 
body and, through it, toward that mechanical order 
of things, of which the body is as an organic part. It 
is an activity which finds in the flesh and the world 
the necessary resistant foil and the lever, whereby 
it is itself at once rendered possible and definite and 
real, so that the agent employing it fights not vainly, 
as "one that beateth the air." The further nature 
of this activity, with its conditions and its law, are 
to be presently examined. Here it is important for 
us first to notice that the possibility just suggested, 
viz., that the flesh, being more than a mere dead 
instrument and endowed as if with a power of its 
own, may reduce its rightful master into bondage 
to itself and so even prevent his existing in any 
other form than that of an unrealized or perverted 
potentiality, — that this possibility, I say, is one, to 
the recognition of which an important place must 
be given in any completely experimental science of 
man, and which indeed occupies a position of fun- 
damental importance in the anthropology of the 
Christian Scriptures. The Scriptures recognize, 
namely, a distinction between the "natural man" 
and the " spiritual man," — a distinction which reap- 
pears under such other forms of expression as the 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 225 

" outward" and the " inward," the "old" and the 
"new," the " first " and the "second," man, or, briefly, 
the "flesh" and the "spirit." The former of these 
comes first in the order of time. It is man as he is 
first made, man as, independently of his own volition, 
he is first physically constituted and landed, a help- 
less stranger, on nature's breast. It is the earthen 
vessel, as to whose destination, whether for honor 
or dishonor, nothing is at first determined. It is, 
considered antecedently to any free and independent 
activity on the part of the man himself, simply the 
potential or possible man, the nominal man, sensibly 
individualized, — defined and located in relations of 
time and space. It is, thus viewed, the sign of a hu- 
man possibility, not of a human reality. But it is 
also, I repeat, something more than this. It is also 
a power, that resists, and that may enter into suc- 
cessful rivalry with, the true, the spiritual man. Its 
resistance we have indicated as necessary to the real 
activity of the spirit. Its successful resistance in- 
volves the spirit's ruin. " To be carnally minded is 
death" (Rom. viii. 6). It is only nominal, not real, 
manhood and life. The subject of it is, morally and 
most essentially, a spectre, a corpse, a veritable 
"body of death." In the flesh there is "no good 
thing;" and this, in the first instance, simply because 
the flesh is neither the seat of any good nor of any 
evil thing; it is morally indifferent. Its action is 
blind, mechanical, and irresponsible. But when, 
and so far as, resisting and warring against the 
spirit, it meets with unchecked success, its work is 



226 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the abomination of moral desolation. He, whose 
whole life is absorbed in the service of the flesh, 
who, not a master, but a real slave, yields submis- 
sively to all the motions of tlie flesh, is not, and can- 
not be, in the kingdom of God or of Man. Nor does 
he demean himself as a member of the kingdom of 
Nature. For then, harmlessly following the normal 
impulses of nature, and being guided in his course 
by that universal providence which is to nature as 
her soul, he would, like the fowls of the air and the 
lilies of the field, simply fulfil, unreflectingly and 
spontaneously, the universal law of nature, in a life 
at harmony with itself and with its surroundings, — 
a life of relative beauty and service. But this he 
never does, and the fact that he never does it is one 
evidence that he cannot do it. He cannot do it, be- 
cause, though visibly born from the womb of nature, 
he is not all of nature or for her. He has another 
birth, which is of the free self-conscious spirit, and 
is of God. By this he is specifically differentiated 
from nature. By virtue of this a specific work is given 
him to do, a work, the doing of which is essential to 
the realization of his own proper and complete be- 
ing and which nature cannot do for him. The nec- 
essary result, therefore, of his seeking to identify 
himself wholly with the purely natural man and de- 
livering himself over to follow none but carnal im- 
pulses, is and can be only the perversion and the 
ruin, both of the natural and of the spiritual man. 
It is a human monstrosity, and its works — since no 
epithet from the realm of God or nature can be found 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 227 

for the purpose of characterizing them — can only be 
called devilish. They are at enmity, both with na- 
ture and with nature's God. In them the image of 
God is not to be found. And they are also a crying 
ontological absurdity; for they contradict, as far as 
is possible, philosophy's universal and experiment- 
ally-founded definition of all true and genuine being 
as grounded in the consistent and regular fulfilment 
of a definite, typical, and purposeful activity. Hence 
also, as above noted, the condition which they de- 
note is rightly termed in Scripture one of death 
rather than life. He who ostensibly "lives" in 
them, is in reality dead, and not alive. The true 
man, with the specific marks and substance of gen- 
uine manhood, is not there. In fact, he has not yet 
begun to be; he has not yet been born; and, in order 
that he may at last really be, and not merely coun- 
terfeit, or, still worse, present nothing but a wretched 
travesty upon, the true being of a man, he must, in 
the expressive language of Jesus, be M born again." 
He must be "born of the Spirit," and " of God." 

The "birth of the Spirit": this, to sense, with its 
abstract mechanical categories, is that incredible and 
so-called "supernatural" wonder, in which thought, 
with its more concrete and completely experimental 
categories, sees, not the contradiction, but the ful- 
filment, of nature and of her prophecies. Here the 
full meaning of creation and redemption — please re- 
call, from the last lecture, how these two concep- 
tions necessarily involve each other — becomes ex- 
plicit and obvious. Here the work of creation first 



228 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

becomes complete. Herein is fulfilled the word 
of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of that ancient 
prophet who, more than all others, seems to have 
been endowed with the power of ''spiritual under- 
standing," saying - , "So shall my word be that goeth 
forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me 
void; but it shall accomplish that which I please, and 
it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it " (Is. 
lv. 1 1). That divine word, which, being spoken, goes 
forth into and creatively constitutes the external uni- 
verse, and whose sound is heard, even as also its 
characters are read, throughout the world, returns 
not to the everlasting speaker " void," or merely as 
an empty and substanceless echo. It returns in- 
deed, but not until, with the birth of the spirit, all 
its implicit meaning or content has been explicitly 
developed, manifested, concretely realized, in the 
world, and so the thing, whereto it was sent, has 
been accomplished. It returns in the form of a cre- 
ation, which, conscious of its true self, can, as na- 
ture with her veiled consciousness can not, be con- 
scious of the Absolute Spirit who is imaged therein; 
a creation which, relatively self-centred in its own 
personality, can perceive that the absolute centre of 
all its conscious life and of all its being is there 
alone where absolute being is to be found; and 
which, therefore, looking God in the face, can 
spiritually return to him and say, "Thou art my 
Father," and be welcomed back to the embrace of 
the divine life and love. 

But we are anticipating our conclusion. The birth 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 229 

of the spirit is indeed man's true birth, and his only 
true birth. The spiritual world, in the energetic 
language of the elder Fichte, is indeed man's " true 
birth-place." Here first he begins to "have life in 
himself," and so to have not merely the outward 
semblance, but also the inward substance, of human- 
ity. From the grave of the flesh, with its dead works, 
proceeds the resurrection of the spirit " to serve the 
living God." But the resurrection is not itself the 
service. The " birth " of the spirit is only its begin- 
ning, not its completion. Fresh-born, it is not yet 
stablished in the image and by the power of the 
"free Spirit" of God. It is, as yet, only a glorious 
possibility, the rich content of which has yet to be 
rescued, redeemed, created, realized, by an appro- 
priate activity. And this activity, I have said, is 
" an activity on man's part, an activity of the spirit, 
founded on spiritual knowledge, subject to the will 
of God (which is but another name for the law of ab- 
solute being), and supported by the activity of God 
himself." 

First, it is a spiritual activity on man's part, or 
proceeding from man himself. A spirit is not made; 
it is self-made. It realizes itself. Self-determina- 
tion is the universal form of all spiritual activity. 
The image of self-determination is presented to us 
in the processes of nature. With the accomplished 
accuracy of a scientific expert Aristotle described 
the process, by which a natural existence is real- 
ized, and is maintained in existence, as one which 
has the form of self-realization: a typical form real- 



230 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

izes itself in and by means of the material that it 
finds lying at hand. 4 The form, I say, of this process 
is that of self-determination. But the substance, 
which this form necessarily implies, is self-conscious- 
ness, or, still better and more explicitly, consciously 
self-determining spirit. And it is because of this re- 
lation, and because the "substance" mentioned is 
not found immediately in nature, that to thought, 
the spirit's organ, the form of nature's life proclaims 
unmistakably the reality of an omnipresent and ever- 
wakeful, divine consciousness, — the self-conscious life 
and activity of God. In the case of man, who is a 
spirit and destined, so far as he becomes truly him- 
self, to be in the image of God, the Absolute Spirit, 
form and substance of self-determination cannot be 
separated. The mere form, or image, will not suffice. 
By this alone man were in no sense discriminated 
from pure nature; he were only "sleeping spirit," no 
better than a bare potentiality. No; in man, if he is 
to be really man, there must be present the living, 
energetic reality of self-determination. He must, 
like his Heavenly Father, be spiritually awake; and 
this, too, not for a moment only, or from time to 
time, but constantly. Not a single act of self-de- 
termination only, nor that act spasmodically repeated 
at uncertain intervals, but a sustained process is re- 
quired, — a process that knows neither haste nor rest 
and through which the spirit, the real man, finding 
means and (so to speak) assimilable material in all 
the changing circumstances and opportunities of his 
existence, patiently and persistently realizes him- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY j — MAN 231 

self in and through the same. " My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work." In these words is sounded 
the key-note of the human spirit's supremest obli- 
gation and privilege. For in order to be, it must 
do, — it must work. It must work out its own " sal- 
vation "; it must realize itself. 

Secondly, the condition of the self-determining 
activity in question is spiritual knowledge. The 
object of this knowledge is " the truth," the truth 
as such, the universal truth. The knowledge spoken 
of is not mere erudition. It does not consist in mere 
information, however encyclopedic the latter may 
be conceived, respecting the particular facts or phe- 
nomena of nature and history and the laws of order — ' 
of co-existence and sequence, — by which these facts 
are rendered at once possible and real objects of 
human intelligence. It does not indeed exclude, 
nor is it necessarily prejudiced by, such " wisdom 
of this world"; nay, more, for purposes of practical 
application this " wisdom," in greater or lesser meas- 
ure, furnishes a needful supplement to spiritual knowl- 
edge; but the two are not identical, and the latter 
of them is the one thing indispensably needful. 
The knowledge in question is the knowledge of 
that whereby all things consist; it is the knowledge 
of Spirit; it is the knowledge of God, the Absolute 
Spirit. "The Spirit is truth" (i John v. 6). This 
is " the truth," not only in form, but also in its ever- 
lasting substance. This is the truth, the knowledge 
of which is to man, the spirit, as " shield and buck- 
ler" (Ps. xci. 4). This is the truth, with which he 



232 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

has his loins girt about (Eph. vi. 14), against which 
he can — except at the cost of spiritual self-destruc- 
tion — do nothing (2 Cor. xiii. 8), and which dwells 
in him and shall be with him forever (2 John 2). 
It is the truth, in and through the understanding 
of which we are to be, and can alone be, "men" 
(1 Cor. xiv. 20). And then, more particularly, this 
truth is to be known " as it is in Jesus," who, by reason 
of his complete organic oneness with "the Father," 
is entitled to call himself "the truth," and whom 
truly, i. e., spiritually, to have "seen," is to have 
seen the Father. Finally, the immediate result of 
his knowledge of the truth is man's freedom. - "Ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free" (John viii. 32). Positive, substantial freedom, 
the freedom of genuine self-possession (truly posses- 
sing one's true self) and self-mastery through self- 
knowledge, is a part of the completed spirit's very 
being; nay, it is identical with its being; and the 
Psalmist employs no vain metaphor, when he as- 
cribes this attribute to God and prays, " Uphold me 
with thy free Spirit" (Ps. li. 12). Or, again, the re- 
sult spoken of is " eternal life," a life whose form is 
not purely phenomenal, consisting in involuntary 
duration, but transcends the form of time and is 
absolute, real, substantial. " This is life eternal, 
that they might know thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John xvii. 3). 

I have said that, according to the voice of Scrip- 
ture, (as also of philosophy,) there is needed, in 
order that man may be truly man, a spiritual ac- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 233 

tivity on his own part, and an activity founded on 
spiritual knowledge. And how indeed, if man's 
being depends on his own doing, — if, in order to 
be himself, he must, in an essential sense, make 
himself, — how, I say, shall he accomplish this work, 
if he know not what he has to do ? How shall he 
make himself a spirit, and the image of God, with- 
out knowing what a spirit, and, more especially, 
what God as a Spirit, is ? But the language above 
employed might lead the superficial observer to 
imagine that the Scriptures are guilty of that ab- 
straction and exaggeration which are attributed to 
Socrates, who, rightly recognizing knowledge as the 
condition of virtue, seemed, in occasional expres- 
sions, forthwith to identify the condition- with that 
which it conditions, or with virtue itself. But that 
knowledge, which is either unto Socratic "virtue" 
or unto eternal life, by no means ends or is absorbed 
in "bare cognition." There is a profound truth in 
the thought that one can deeply and fully know 
only that which one, by life and action, is and ex- 
emplifies. Of spiritual knowledge or the knowledge 
peculiarly appropriate and necessary for the perfect 
man, it is even more profoundly true than of any 
other, that it is founded in and must be confirmed 
by experience, — taking this latter term in its truest 
and original sense, as denoting, not a mere passive 
reception of impressions, but an active "testing," 
"trying," or "finding out," and that, too, whether 
with or without the express and conscious aim or 
intention of " acquiring knowledge." The first con- 



234 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

dition of a genuine knowledge of the truth is, ac- 
cording to Plato, not mere mechanical intellection, 
but the active and unquenchable love of the truth. 
The accomplished mathematician, even, does not 
become such by merely hearing of and assenting 
to general mathematical principles, but by work- 
ing out the problems of mathematics for himself; 
and this he never does without an enthusiastic and 
moving interest in his work. And so, too, truths 
of life — the truths of man's perfect being — can only 
be, in any proper and adequate sense, known, a? 
they are actually lived; and they can be lived onlj 
as they are loved; for, as Fichte says, " What a man 
loves, that he lives." Accordingly, what the Scrip- 
tures require of the perfect man, and that upon which 
they represent his freedom as conditioned, is not 
simply that he possess and give his assent to cor- 
rect information about the truth in general, but 
that he do it, that he carry it out in practice, in 
his particular sphere. He is to "walk in the truth," 
and he that " walketh in the truth," " walketh in love." 
He must first hear and understand the voice which 
says, "This is the way," and then obey the command, 
"Walk ye in it" (Is. xxx. 21). And consequent upon 
such obedience is to be that fuller, more complete, 
personal, and experimental knowledge of "the way, 
the truth, and the life," which shall make him "free." 
" If any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
doctrine, whether it be of God" (John vii. 17). A 
spiritual activity founded on knowledge, or, in other 
words, a personal working out of the problem of 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 235 

man's true and spiritual being in life, this is at once 
condition and proof both of one's freedom and of 
one's spiritual knowledge. 

Thirdly, I have said that the activity, whereby 
man realizes himself, is scripturally viewed as an 
activity subject to the will of God, and supported 
by the activity of God himself. Man's being, as we 
have seen, is only in and through his doing. The 
law of his perfect doing is identical with the law of 
his perfect being. And this law is identical with 
the will of God. The divine will is not arbitrary. 
God is not a monstrous and unnatural task-master, 
capable of taking advantage of his own omnipotence 
to impose upon man the obligation to obey laws 
which are out of all relation to the nature of man, 
and which receive at most only a quasi-justification, 
and one that borders closely upon the blasphemous, 
when it is alleged that they are instituted exclu- 
sively for the " glory" of God. The will of God 
concerning man is, that man should " stand fast in 
the liberty" of spiritual manhood; that thus he 
should be a member of the Kingdom of Heaven; 
and this law is, accordingly, summed up by its au- 
thoritative expounder in the exhortation, "Be ye 
therefore " — not something other than yourselves, 
not stocks or stones, not machines, not beasts, nor 
devils, nor demigods — but "be ye perfect, as your 
Father in heaven is perfect." The will of God is 
nothing other than the law of absolute or perfected 
being. It is the law of the most perfect realization 
of the spiritual nature. And the activity, I say, by 



236 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

which, as it regards man, this law is carried out, is 
supported by the activity of God himself. 

We approach now the conclusion of the whole 
matter. Man is not an absolutely independent be- 
ing. He is not a little God by himself. He belongs 
to the realm of creation and, consequently, of re- 
demption. He belongs to a realm which does not 
belong to him as an individual, but belongs to God. 
And the active sovereignty in this realm is never 
for an instant abandoned by him from whom it 
proceeds and to whom it returns. The culminating 
error of a purely mechanical philosophy consists in 
the supposition that the world, with all that it con- 
tains — including, of course, man, — having been " first 
caused" or ''created" by a divine artificer, is then 
left to run on, automatically or otherwise, by its 
own "laws," unaided and unharmed by divine "in- 
tervention." But thus, as we have seen, the real 
relation of things is in conception completely re- 
versed and turned topsy-turvy. The created uni- 
verse is thus practically put in the place of the 
Absolute, and God, the true Absolute, is repre- 
sented as nothing better than a casual outsider, to 
whom the dubious compliment is paid of admitting 
that he has the power to "interfere" in the world's 
affairs, but of whom nothing less can in justice be 
required than that henceforth he keep his hands off; 
the world, once existing, is held to be able to take 
care of iself. This conception, we have already seen, 
is superficial, being capable of being entertained only 
by him whose point of view, in contemplating the 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 237 

universe, is such as to allow him to perceive only 
the first surface-facts about the universe. The so- 
called automatic regularity of physical phenomena 
is but one evidence of the immutable activity of him, 
in whom it has its being. The withdrawal of the 
divine activity from the world, the cessation of the 
divine work, were the contradiction of the divine 
nature. And it would also — since the relative or 
finite subsists only through the activity of the Ab- 
solute and Infinite — be tantamount to the instan- 
taneous annihilation of the world. No, the world 
is the incessant divine work, in which indeed no one 
" interferes," unless it be man himself. The divine 
work in and through the world is, as we saw, a 
displaying of the " riches of God," and becomes 
complete when, in a finite spirit like man, the im- 
age of God himself is realized. 

And now we have been considering the responsi- 
bility for the realization of this image as resting on 
man himself. This we saw to be not only scrip- 
tural, but also from the nature of the case necessary, 
since man cannot be in the image of God, he cannot 
be a spirit, except he really possess and exercise 
the power of self-determination. In order really to 
be man, he must be responsible. But, I repeat, the 
power that he uses is not self-given or self-created. 
It is a power of God, lent or committed to him as a 
sacred trust. The individual is not absolute. His 
highest privilege, and his highest possibility, is to be 
a coworker with God. He is to carry out the divine 
work. He may indeed neglect or even work against 



238 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

his divine calling; but, so doing - , his work comes 
to nought. The result is, not positive, not realiza- 
tion of the true self, but negative, or self-destruction. 
"The wages of sin is death." God, the Absolute 
Being, the source and foundation of all existence, 
is/ per se, or independently of and antecedently 
to any voluntary activity on man's part, man's 
"strength." And man makes himself then to be 
truly man only as he consciously and with full 
knowledge and intent, " makes God his strength." 
Beneath him are, without his will, " everlasting 
arms." He is, in love and trust and with all the 
energy of a fully self-determined will, to lay hold 
upon those arms. His own activity becomes genu- 
ine, substantial, and effective, only when it is thus 
" supported by the activity of God himself." 

We have represented that the true object of man's 
will is the " true self." It must now be evident that 
the true self is something far different from that 
which is ordinarily understood by the " purely in- 
dividual." The type of the purely individual is, as 
we have previously pointed out, the mathematical 
point, which is without inward difference or complex- 
ity and equally without external relation to aught 
other than itself; unextended in time or space, and 
complete in itself; — complete, the rather, in its ab- 
solute incompleteness or substancelessness. It is, 
or it is conceived as being, without or independent 
of anything else. In general, the individual is the 
sensible, that whose relations are, at the most, only 
external and superficial. A "thing" is individual. 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 239 

A person, a spirit, is more than that. Instead of 
excluding its neighbor, its " other," it includes it. 
Its essential side is the side of its universality. Thus 
if we look only at the sphere of man's consciousness, 
we know that here the self is not to be identified 
with any one of the myriad different conscious states, 
through which it passes. The self is rather the uni- 
versal form and condition of all particular states. 
But, further, these states are, as such, only the 
means whereby the self is placed and maintained in 
relation with a world, which at first confronts man 
as a stranger — as something wholly and only foreign 
to him, the conscious subject. With deepening in- 
telligence, however, he comes to see that in this 
world he is no stranger, but really at home. Nor is 
it foreign to him, but, in a very strict sense, as it 
were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. On the 
one hand, he sees in this " world" an organized sys- 
tem, in which he is a member; a system, therefore, 
which in a very real sense is necessary both to the 
idea and to the concrete reality of himself; and a 
system, also, to whose completeness he himself is 
necessary. On the other hand, he becomes prac- 
tically so identified with his particular "world," the 
world of his special, individual environment, that, 
separated from it, he, as individual, withers and dies. 
It thus shows itself to be very effectively identified 
with, or a true part of, his empirical self. But again, 
man sees in nature, when he looks more deeply and 
closely, simply the welling up, as it were, and the 
manifestation under the most varied forms, of a life 



240 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and substance which he recognizes as one with his 
own spiritual life and substance. In a deeper sense, 
therefore, than before, he finds himself in nature, and 
nature in himself. He finds in nature, not a limita- 
tion, but rather a fulfilment, of his own real self, of 
his personality. And yet not its direct, nor its com- 
plete fulfilment. Nature, as such, is not that spirit 
that man sees in her, but rather its transparent sym- 
bol and its constant work. 

Man, we have been saying", must will and realize 
his true self, and we want to know wherein this self 
consists, or what it is that man wills when he wills 
and realizes his true self. And we have said, first, 
that the true self is nothing purely individual, but 
something universal. Secondly, the point we wish 
to make now is that while, in a very essential sense, 
the self of the individual comprehends, rather than 
excludes, the world of nature, of which it is a part 
and to which it is immediately related, yet man ob- 
viously does not find himself in nature in any such 
sense or to any such degree that he may say of it, 
" This is the self that I will and that by my own self- 
determining activity I realize." He cannot, I say, 
be said thus to find himself in nature, if you consider 
her on that side by which she is differentiated from 
the Spirit which is the source of her life. For, thus 
considered, Nature herself is also purely individual; 
nay, hers is the peculiar realm of the individual, the 
particular, the finite, and hence not of the universal 
which we seek. The object of our quest is to be 
found, not in anything that is particular, finite, purely 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 241 

individual, nor in any sum total or mere aggregate of 
such particulars, but in that which is the source and 
condition of all that is particular and finite. Not in 
willing the finite, relative, and dependent does a 
man will his true self, and not in realizing them, as 
such, does he realize his true self, but in willing and 
realizing the infinite, absolute, and independent. In 
this he finds his real substance. From this, nought 
can separate him, whether principalities or powers, 
or things present or things to come. For to. this, 
the everlasting and absolute and ever-present source 
of his being, he is immediately related. With this 
he is connected by the inmost springs of his being. 
It is in this that he immediately lives and moves and 
has his being. With all else his connection is indi- 
rect. With all things finite he is substantially con- 
nected only through the common dependence of all 
things upon the same Absolute, which is the only 
true foundation of his own being. And this Abso- 
lute is God. In him alone man finds his true home, 
his " dwelling-place." Man finds 'himself and wills 
himself, in the truest and most unqualified sense of 
the terms, when he finds and wills himself in God, 
and God in him. Then can. he say, in the fullest 
sense, " Lo, I come to do thy will, O my God." And 
then at last is he, not merely phenomenally and em- 
pirically, but substantially, genuinely, and absolutely 
free. That freedom, which is limited and deter- 
mined by the empirical necessity of choosing among 
various finite particulars, or so-called alternatives, 
but half deserves its name. It is, at most, only an 



242 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

outward and formal and accidental freedom. It is 
not substantial freedom. It is not the "liberty" in 
which the perfect man "stands fast." It is not pos- 
itive and unqualified ^^"-determination. On the con- 
trary, when this so-called empirical freedom of choice 
among various finite particulars is the only freedom 
that one has, one is not really free at all, but only a 
slave. Losing sight of the Absolute and of his es- 
sential relation to it, and practically identifying him- 
self with that in and about him which is finite, chang- 
ing, transitory, he is effectively separated from all 
genuine, abiding spiritual substance; he is separated 
from his true self, and knows it not; and he is the 
slave of sin. The life which he ostensibly leads and 
which he calls his, is an essential illusion, and on its 
"death" depends the salvation, the rescue, the re- 
demption of his true life. To him, therefore, if he 
can but understand them, the words of Jesus are full 
of a tremendous significance, when he says that he 
that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth 
his life shall find it. That ostensible life, which is 
founded in nothing deeper than the thought and 
love and will of the particular and contingent must be 
" lost," or one is eternally dead. It is with reference 
to this " life " that the Christian Apostle says, " I die 
daily." This is that death unto sin, from the grave 
of which arises the true and eternal "life unto God." 
The will, therefore, which identifies itself with the 
will of God, — the will which, primarily or in the first 
instance, wills nought but God, and then wills all 
else from the point of view of God or of the absolute 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 243 

and divine will, — possesses that absolute substance 
of freedom, wherein consists the perfected reality 
of the spirit. This is freedom through knowledge, 
love, and practical realization of " the truth." It is 
a steadfast freedom, for it is founded on the only- 
rock that never moves. It is unlimited, for the rea- 
son that it is the attribute of a will whose object is 
the Absolute, — i. e., that which itself conditions and 
so transcends all limits, — and that in so doing, — or 
in willing him in whom are the very springs of its 
life, — it has willed itself. It is strong, for it makes 
God its strength. This is the freedom of those who 
can say, " Of his fulness have we received;" of those, 
whose bodies are "temples of the Holy Ghost;" of 
those who, dwelling in love, dwell in God and God 
in them (i John iv. 16), and who, increasing in 
love, "increase with the increase of God" (Col. ii. 
19). These are they who, though dead — dead, 
namely, to their former, illusory selves, to the "old 
man," the "finite, selfish ego" — have yet found and 
saved their true selves. Though dead, they are al- 
ready risen with Christ. Dead unto sin they are 
alive unto God, through Jesus Christ (Rom. vi. 11). 
They are dead, and yet they still walk the earth. 
They are not in the grave. They simply look no 
longer on the mere fact of their "walking the 
earth," enjoying its transient pleasures, and engag- 
ing in its changing occupations as that wherein their 
true selves and their absolute life consist. They 
are dead, and yet their true life is saved, being " hid 
with Christ in God" (Col. iii. 3). 



244 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Before leaving this inexhaustible theme — over 
which we have already lingered too long — there are 
two points, on which it is indispensable that we say 
a word, however hurriedly. Of these, one is the 
connection which the Scriptures ascribe to Jesus 
Christ with the work of man's substantial redemp- 
tion and self-realization (or ''salvation"); and the 
other is the absolute remoteness of scriptural ethics 
and its doctrine of the perfect man from anything 
like what may be called fanatical, anti-worldly 
quietism. 

(i) We have but to recall from the last lecture 
the. view which we there reached respecting the 
Incarnate Word, as the Creator and Redeemer of all 
things, " whether they be things in earth, or things 
in heaven," and then to extend it to the case of man, 
at the same time taking into the account the differ- 
ence by which man has been exhibited as distin- 
guished from and above " nature," — we have, I say, 
but to do this, in order to perceive in what special 
sense Christ is scripturally regarded as the Redeemer 
and Saviour of mankind. The world, as we saw, is 
represented to us in Scripture as created and re- 
deemed by the divine Word in no merely mechanical 
sense. It is created, not simply by God in Jesus 
Christ, but in him. The relation involved is not 
simply eternal and — thus to express it" — theatrical, 
but internal, intrinsic, vital. The divine Word, the 
Son of God, gives himself,. in order that the world 
may be, and that, being filled with his riches, it may 
be, not only outwardly and, as it were dramatically 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 245 

and scenically, but inwardly and really, through the 
completion of its very life and being, to the praise 
and demonstration of his glorious and infinite love. 
In like manner the redemption of man is accom- 
plished, not simply by, but in, Christ Jesus. Man 
"works out" his "own salvation,"/, e., the rescue 
and the realization of his true self, in inward, organ- 
ic union with, and intelligent, voluntary, and loving 
dependence on, God who " worketh in" him. Thus 
he becomes a " new creature " or, simply, a " perfect 
man, in Christ Jesus." The relation is organic, and 
not merely mechanical; it is ontological and essen- 
tial, and not merely spectacular and phenomenal. 
The Master himself has expressed this most clearly 
and effectively by the well-known comparison of the 
vine and the branches. " I am the vine, and my 
Father is the husbandman." "Abide in me, and I 
in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except 
ye abide in me. I am the vine, and ye are the 
branches" (John xv. I, 4, 5). And the perfection 
of man, the realization, and not the destruction, of 
his personality, — the rather the fulfilment of his 
personality through the realization for it and in 
it of its true, universal, and infinite content, — is re- 
presented by the Christ as dependent on the same 
condition of organic unity. For his prayer is, " that 
they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and 

I in thee, that they also may be one in us 

I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made 
pei'fect in one" (John xvii. 21, 23). And in the con- 



246 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

seriousness of the fulfilment of this prayer the " be- 
loved apostle" writes: "We are in him that is true, 
even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, 
and eternal life" (i John v. 20). Again, St. Paul 
declares, " He that is joined to the Lord is one 
spirit" (1 Cor. vi. 17). This, I must repeat, is the 
completion of the spiritual personality, — not its 
destruction through a fancied pantheistic absorption 
in one abstract, universal, and so-called divine es- 
sence or "substance." It is at last having real and 
genuine "life in one's self." Besides, this "conclu- 
sion" is not merely reached in some far-off and un- 
observable future, but also here and now: thus it 
has ever been from the foundation of the world and 
thus it shall ever be. It is reached and confirmed 
and verified in the present experience of mankind, 
or else the whole tale is as an empty sound; and 
surely no such pantheistic absorption as just men- 
tioned is ever witnessed in man's experience. That 
some such relation between the individual and the 
Absolute as that which we have been contemplat- 
ing, must needs be conceived as essential to moral 
perfection, is illustrated in all moral theories that 
have even in the slightest degree the form of philo- 
sophic completeness. Thus, in the " philosophy of 
evolution," an absolute and universal Power is re- 
cognized, the essence and particular nature of which 
are held to be unknown and unknowable, but of 
which we do know that the universal law of its 
operation is the law of evolution. The category of 
evolution is thus made the highest category of posi- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY; — MAN 247 

tive, substantial human thought. Evolution, so far 
as our positive knowledge extends, is made to oc- 
cupy for man the place of the Absolute. But now, it 
is held, man is only the highest product of evolution. 
His moral nature is its most perfect work. And 
man's business, as a moral being, is simply to know 
this law and consciously to indentify himself with 
it. It is his strength and his substance; and he is 
consciously and voluntarily to make it his strength. 
He, the dependent individual, is to become his true 
self, by adopting for his own the law and, as it were, 
the life (if it were permitted in this connection to 
employ so characteristically spiritual a category 
as that of life) of the universal (i. e., of evolution). 
The attempt to build up the science of man on a 
basis which abstracts from the spiritual nature of 
man, may well excite regret at useful labor lost; 
and that the result of it is the " humanization of 
ethics " may justly be doubted. But the result 
shows that the philosophic impulse cannot be pres- 
ent and operate, however blindly, in man, as he 
seeks for self-knowledge, without his seeking, in 
one form or another, for the Absolute and looking 
to find in it the spring and the strength and the 
law of his true life and being. All this philosophy 
and religion — which, unlike philosophic mechanism, 
look at concrete wholes and not af parts — find, not 
in the unknowable, nor in the mechanical law of its 
sensible activity, but in the Everlasting Spirit, the 
Father of our spirits, and the very principle and 
light of all knowledge. 



248 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The peculiar nature of the redemptive work as- 
cribed by the Scriptures to Christ in his relation to 
man, arises from, or, at all events, corresponds to, 
the peculiar nature of man himself, as heretofore set 
forth. It has relation to man as, in distinction from 
external nature, a self-conscious and responsible 
being, capable of error and of sin and of knowing 
his error and sin. Man, sinning, feels in himself 
the beginning of moral ruin, of moral self-murder; 
and thus is sown in him the seed of a despair which, 
unless counteracted, must cut the nerve of all his 
resolution and all his effort. He has sinned against 
himself, and his first feeling is' that he can never 
either forgive or recover himself. But he has also, 
on the other hand, sinned against God, and, think- 
ing of God as of one like unto himself, imagines 
that his arm can no longer be stretched out, except 
for vengeance and punishment. And now the divine 
problem is to bring redemption to such an one. Ob- 
viously, this cannot be accomplished by mechanical 
might, but only (as saith the Lord) ''by my Spirit." 
The agency must be a purely moral and spiritual one. 
It must be used so as not to destroy, but to restore 
freedom. And this is done, not by representing God 
as taking pleasure in the sin of man, or interfering 
to prevent the moral self-destruction of any who wil- 
fully persist in transgression; — this were obviously 
impossible; — but by exhibiting him to man in his 
absolute nature of love, as one who is able to "en- 
dure such contradiction of sinners against himself," 
without contradicting his own nature and falling 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 249 

forthwith into a state of implacable anger; as one 
whose arm is always stretched out to save; as one 
who, instead of coldly waiting to see whether man 
will " repent" and seek forgiveness, is ever actively 
seeking to compass the completion of the divine 
creative-redemptive work in man. With the work 
of man's redemption the Scriptures represent the 
life and death of the Incarnate Word on earth as 
especially connected. And yet the work of Christ 
on earth, eighteen hundred years ago, is not to be 
considered as the demonstration of a new disposi- 
tion on the part of God, or of a new determination 
on his part with reference to man, but only as a 
new and most effective demonstration of the ever- 
lasting disposition and determination of God with 
regard both to nature and to man. It is a demon- 
stration, or demonstrative. exhibition, of the truth 
that in the eternal nature of God who is the Alpha 
and the Omega of existence, the fountain and the 
goal of all true being, the reconciliation of the 
world and of man to God has everlastingly its 
potential and efficient foundation. It brings home 
to man, in the most impressive and effective way, 
the truth that the perfection and the supreme privi- 
lege of his essential humanity lie in his spiritual 
union with God, the Father of his spirit, and that 
the way to this perfection lies in his determined 
will to become reconciled, through knowledge, love, 
and obedience, to God (2 Cor. v. 20). He is peni- 
tently to abandon, and then to forget and "lose" 
his former, fancied, individual, finite "self," with all 



250 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

its moral wounds and putrefying sores, with the end 
of finding his true self, in larger and diviner fashion, 
in God. " Forgetting those things which are be- 
hind, and reaching forth unto those things which 
are before," he is to "press toward the mark for 
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
And "as many as be perfect" are "thus minded" 
(Phil. iii. 13-15). 

(2) This doctrine of Christian ethics is no doctrine 
of mystic quietism or asceticism. The Christian vic- 
tory is not won through an attempted withdrawal 
from the world, but by overcoming it; — by remain- 
ing in the world and conquering it. The " universal 
self" of man is not an abstraction, but, like all true 
universals, a power to realize itself in and through 
the materials of particular circumstance and oppor- 
tunity, in the midst of which the individual may be 
placed. Far from being privileged to withdraw him- 
self from the world's work, the "perfect man" real- 
izes that it is only through him that the world's 
work can be truly done. Adding to virtue knowl- 
edge, he seeks, therefore, to know the world and its 
ways and laws by every means, and then takes the 
leading part in its work, doing all things to the 
glory of God and so turning the world's life and 
work into a sacrament. But, above all, he is not 
the mere slave of ways and means and laws; he is 
rather their master, to learn and know and then 
use them. There is therefore in him something 
which is higher than, though not opposed to "law." 
This is love. Through love — not through ignor- 



BIBLICAL ONTOLOGY;— MAN. 251 

ance, nor merely through abstract knowledge — 
through love he fulfils the law. Teaching the world 
this more excellent way, he makes heaven and the 
will of God to reign upon earth. 

Finally, if the foregoing account is correct, it will 
be seen that religion according to the Christian con- 
ception, does not simply consist in being informed 
of and then formally accepting a " scheme " of rescue 
from the damning consequences of sin. It is not 
merely salvation from something; it is also the sal- 
vation of something, viz., of the true man. It is the 
creative-redemptive realization of the perfect man, 
in living union with the Absolute, with God. And 
if the ethics which it involves is not "human ethics," 
then no such ethics ever existed or can, without an 
essential change in the nature of man y ever exist. 



LECTURE VIII. 

COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

r I ^HE preceding lectures have, I trust, done some- 
-*■ thing to deepen in us the conviction that re- 
ligion universally, and Christianity in particular, is 
by its very .nature, a thing which is essentially "of 
and for intelligence." Other accounts may be, and 
not infrequently are, also given of religion, — such 
as that it is an affair of feeling or emotion; or that 
its realm is identical with that of the poetic imagi- 
nation, in which realm it strews the flowers that 
poesy plucks and kindles the fires with which all 
artistic genius glows, etc., etc. And all these ac- 
counts may be, in their way and measure, very true, 
without overthrowing our initial statement. Nay, 
rather, whatever of truth is in them may be, and 
is, conditioned upon the larger truth of our state- 
ment. For the being — man — in whose feeling or 
imagination religion is alleged to have its home, 
is a being having the attribute of self-conscious- 
ness and thought. Religious emotion is the emo- 
tion only of thinking beings, just as also it is only 
the imagination of thinking beings, that is crea- 
tively poetic. In reality, all these and other sides 

(252) 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 253 

of man's active nature are combined within this 
nature, in a living organic unity, and are conse- 
quently all necessary to the whole and complete 
man; and inasmuch as religion — in the words of 
another 1 — is "an affair of the whole and undivided 
life of the human spirit," it follows that it will dis- 
play its life and power in all the directions, or on 
all the sides, of this life. But of self-conscious in- 
telligence it has to be admitted, that it is not merely 
one among the several different sides of man : s spir- 
itual nature, but that it is also the fundamental one. 
It is the one common to all and conditioning all. 
The other sides are as particulars, to which intel- 
ligence is as the unifying and self-determining uni- 
versal. So that religion is, (for example,) an affair 
of human " emotion," only because human emotion 
is conditioned by human intelligence. 

When we say that religion is of and for intelligence, 
we say that which, in kind, if not in degree, is equally 
true of all the other characteristic functions or works 
of specifically human activity, such, for example, 
as artistic -creation or the founding and rearing of 
states. And in each of these cases we mean to 
affirm, not merely the insignificant truism, that the 
agents concerned are "intelligent" in the sense of 
being empirically conscious individuals, but rather 
the significant truth, that what the genuine artist 
or statesman does — his activity and the result of 
his activity — is, partly with, partly and perhaps still 
more without, his consciousness, determined by and, 
in its way and measure, a revelation of the absolute 



254 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

nature and the absolute objective or ontological 
conditions of intelligence. What I mean is this: the 
genuine artist, engaged in productive work, acts, 
not with or from one of the superficial sides of his 
nature, abstracting from all the rest; he does not 
create his work of art merely by dint of intellectual 
reflection, or of pure feeling, or of some special, ac- 
quired technical knowledge or skill. Not by any 
one of these, nor by all of them, considered as a 
mere aggregate of "faculties" or acquired "accom- 
plishments," does he act, but by something that is 
deeper than these, — something in which all special 
faculties are fused and to which they are subordi- 
nated. His action proceeds, not from the outside 
of his nature, but from the inside: not from the part, 
but from the whole. His whole being — which is 
wider than mere reflective consciousness, or pure 
feeling, or any and all " accomplishments," though 
not exclusive of them — is engaged. He works better 
than he knows and better than he feels. His work 
is thus a revelation to him, as it is to others. But 
it is a revelation of and for intelligence. In the 
presence of a work of art one feels, not startled and 
bewildered, as if confronted by something wholly 
foreign and hostile to, or incommensurate with, one's 
self, but supremely at home. Intelligence is not 
offended and put to confusion, but satisfied. It finds 
its petty, hard-learned laws of technical detail not 
violated, but, along with other laws that its re- 
flective consciousness knew not of, respected and 
observed in masterly perfection. The artist's whole 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 255 

being, I say, not only his outward but above all 
his inward being, has been at work. And as his 
" whole being " is not a little absolute entity by 
itself, in effectual mechanical separation from all 
else that exists, but rests on and is in organic con- 
nection with the true and only and universal Abso- 
lute, it follows that his work, while it is his, is also 
the work of that Absolute in which, as artist, he 
lives and moves and has his being. It is as true 
in art, as in religion, that " it is not in man that 
walketh to direct his steps." The " walking," the 
work, is his, but he feels and knows that it belongs 
to him, not as a mere finite individual, but as an 
infinite personality; 2 that is to say, it belongs to 
him as a spiritual being, whose personal reality 
and substantial independence are fulfilled, not by 
pantheistic-mechanical absorption in one universal 
" substance," but by organic union with an absolute 
Spirit. The true artist, then, as the common phrase 
has it, is " inspired." A " divine afflatus" is said to 
fall upon him, " Patitur Deum" His own genius 
is at the same time a divine inspiration. 

Now what I started out to illustrate was the 
statement that the true artist's work and activity 
are " determined by and are a revelation of the 
absolute nature of intelligence and of the absolute 
objective or ontological conditions of intelligence." 
It will now perhaps be sufficiently understood in 
what sense this statement is intended. It may per- 
haps be otherwise expressed as follows: — True artis- 
tic activity is prompted by the instinct of intelligence, 



256 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

and of intelligence taken in the most comprehensive 
sense of the term. And by as much as this is true, 
it is also true — in view of the organic oneness of 
intelligence and being — that the activity in ques- 
tion is prompted likewise by the instinct of being, 
or of reality, these terms, in like manner, being con- 
sidered in their most comprehensive and absolute 
sense. The work of the artist, considered both 
as process and as product, becomes therefore an 
expression at once of the absolute nature of intelli- 
gence and of the absolute object of intelligence. 
It is, so to speak, in its peculiar way an objectified 
expression or incarnation of the absolute nature and 
object of intelligence. It may hence be called, in 
an especial sense, one of the " texts" of philosophy, 
— a kind of document, which contains implicitly, or 
expresses in symbolic characters, the sense which 
it is the whole business of philosophy to render 
explicit and make manifest for reflective conscious- 
ness. It reveals the infinite in the finite and the 
organic oneness of both these terms. And so it is 
that a philosophy of art, in the true sense of the 
term, is possible, or that art is a true text, subject, 
or datum for philosophy. 3 

What is thus true of the working and the result 
of artistic genius is also true, mutatis mutandis, of 
the work accomplished by the genius of humanity in 
all its other directions, as, for example, in the foun- 
dation and nurture of states. It is above all true 
respecting the life and work of man in religion. But 
the case of religion is distinguished by peculiar dif- 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 257 

ferences from the other cases, to which we have 
referred. In working out and seeking an expression 
for his religious ideas, man is more consciously 
and distinctly determined by the thought, or by 
the dim sense, of the universal problems of exist- 
ence and by the felt need of discovering their so- 
lution, than when working under the influence of 
an artistic or politico-social inspiration. Different, 
too, is the form in which the results of this religious 
activity are finally expressed. For while art — and, 
most immediately, literary and poetic art, as in 
" sacred writings" — enters naturally, as a means of 
formal expression, into the service of religion; and 
while the state, too, may and does furnish an ob- 
jective medium or instrument for the realization 
of religious ideas; yet neither the work of art, as 
such, nor the state, as such, is the most direct and 
characteristic result or expression of what we may 
call the working of the religious genius in man. 
This ''result or expression" is found, the rather, 
in what are termed religious ideas — opinions, views, 
beliefs, dogmas, expressed and, according to the 
belief common to most forms of religion, divinely 
communicated to man in the form of myths, stories, 
historic narratives, songs, prophecies, proverbs, and 
precepts, which are, in form and language, adapted, 
as nearly as may be, to the comprehension of the 
minds of all classes: — " he who runs may read," and 
he who reads will understand, or, at least, will think 
and believe that he understands. Further, religious 
ideas find symbolic expression in rites and ceremo- 



258 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

nies, which serve, among other things, as impres- 
sive and effective object-lessons in the system of re- 
ligious instruction. But it also belongs to the very 
sense of religious ideas that they are held, not simply 
as conscious intellectual possessions, and objects of 
a purely abstract and uninterested intellectual assent, 
but as a power to mould the heart and direct the 
life. They are, in short, not merely theoretical, but 
also practical. And so it is that -their formative and 
directive influence reappears, always implicitly, if not 
also explicitly and to immediate observation, in every 
sphere of human life and activity, whether private or 
public. Still further, the subject-matter of these 
ideas is, in varying degrees, man and his absolute 
relations to the universe in which he finds himself 
placed, the powers of the universe, its origin and 
destiny, — its meaning, its essential reality, its gov- 
ernment, and all of these with special reference to 
the nature and possibilities, the duties and the priv- 
ileges, of man. In brief, religious ideas relate, as, 
in the particular case of Christianity, we have al- 
ready seen, both directly and indirectly to the same 
topics which are the characteristic and final object 
of philosophical inquiry. The difference is simply 
this: religious ideas, speaking universally, express 
that which has the appearance of being the instinc- 
tive judgment of mankind respecting subjects, about 
which philosophy seeks to reach a reasoned, demon- 
strative conclusion. In religion man apprehends 
or claims to apprehend that which philosophy aims 
to comprehend. And, further, religion involves the 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 259 

living and practicing of that which philosophy, as 
such, only contemplates and endeavors, with cool 
and unbiassed judgment, to understand.* 

This being the case, the sense of the expression, 
"philosophic content of religion," and the propriety 
of its employment become obvious. We may see 
what truth there was in the abstract principle enun- 
ciated at the beginning of the Scholastic philosophy 
as a premise justifying the use of " reason " in the 
attempt to comprehend and demonstrate the sub- 
stance of " faith," — the principle, namely, that true 
religion and true philosophy agree, and are indeed 
the same. This, of course, was tantamount to a dec- 
laration that faith could and must bear to be ques- 
tioned — examined — by intelligence. And the res- 
olution of the Scholastic Doctors to proceed with 
the application was a testimony of the highest kind 
to the sincerity of their conviction that Christianity 
was "true religion." So, too, one of the early Fa- 
thers of the Church, inspired by a like conviction, 
could declare that faith was abbreviated knowledge, 
while knowledge was faith in the form of intelli- 
gence. 5 It is only, as we have before remarked, be- 
cause, and so far as, faith' and philosophy thus stand 
on the same ground and deal with the same subject- 
matter, that the appearance of a conflict between 
them is possible; while, on the other hand, it is also 
only for this reason that true religion can and does 
find in genuine philosophy an appreciative and effi- 
cient defender. 

If the relation between religion, or faith, and phi- 



260 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

losophy, or intelligence, is such as has been stated, 
two or three questions naturally present themselves, 
which we must briefly notice. First, if faith is abbre- 
viated knowledge, what need — it may be asked — is 
there of seeking to have it expanded into the forms 
of explicit and demonstrative intelligence ? In what 
respect — so some one may express himself — is the 
modest and humble " abbreviation " inferior to the 
twin-sister, bearing the more pretentious name of 
knowledge ? An other and more serious question is 
the following: Just us we may say that comprehen- 
sion depends on prior apprehension, so may and 
must we not say that, to the very existence of phi- 
losophy, the prior existence of religion is indispen- 
sable ? Can philosophy exist without the data that 
religion furnishes ? 

Let us look at the latter question first. Philoso- 
phy can certainly not exist without data. Philoso- 
phy is science, is knowledge, and a necessary pre- 
condition of the existence of science or knowledge 
is the existence of an object of knowledge. No true 
science makes any pretence of mechanically creating 
its own object. In this sense, as we have previously 
insisted, no science is or can be " a priori." While, 
in the order of absolute intelligence, there can no 
more be an " object" prior to a "subject," than vice 
versa, — both object and subject being, the rather, as 
has been shown, organically one, — yet, in the order 
of the development of dependent human intelligence, 
subject and object have the form of separation and 
mutual independence, and then their union in in- 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 261 

telligence, or, in other words, the actualization of in- 
telligence, depends in the first instance on what 
may be termed the essentially mechanical process 
of bringing them together; the subject must find 
its object, or the object must be " presented" or 
"given," as it were ab extra, to the subject. The 
peculiar, object of philosophy — I repeat now what 
has been said in a previous lecture — is the experience 
of man, in its whole nature and extent; — not of some 
part of experience, considered in abstraction from 
the whole; — and, in particular, of experience as a 
living whole, a complete and active process, and 
not of that abstraction which is conceived and de- 
scribed as purely passive and merely mechanically 
receptive experience. Experience, then, is the datum 
which philosophy must first have (pardon the appar- 
ent paradox) before it can itself exist. If religion is 
a necessary part of this datum, or of man's concrete 
and complete living experience, considered as it ex- 
ists prior to and independently of systematic philo- 
sophical inquiry, then we must unquestionably say 
that its existence prior to philosophy is essentially 
necessary for the first existence of the latter. 

Now, with regard to the empirical question of fact, 
there can be no doubt, which is worth discussing 
here, that mankind universally have been distinc- 
tively religious, or have had " religions," before they 
have proceeded to engage in what is distinctively 
termed and known as philosophical inquiry. So 
much for the question of historic order. Regarding 
the further question, whether religion is a necessary 



262 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

part of the pre-philosophical experience of man, — 
i. e., of that experience which, we have admitted, 
must be " given," before philosophy can begin, — there 
can, obviously, also be no doubt that it must be an- 
swered in the affirmative, unless the nature of re- 
ligion has above been wholly misrepresented. In- 
voluntary apprehension and spontaneous reflection, 
grounded in the living experience of man, relating 
expressly or implicitly to the ultimate grounds and 
ends of that experience, winged with imagination, 
reacting on the emotions and the will, and event- 
ually moulding and determining conduct and prac- 
tice, — these primary conditions and first fruits of re- 
ligion, whether actually contained in any degree in 
the " experience " of every individual among the low- 
est savages or not, do, most assuredly and obviously, 
constitute a necessary part of that experience which 
must be gone through before men can pass on to 
such voluntary reflection, and to such comprehension 
through demonstration, as philosophy contemplates 
and demands. 

But we have not yet touched the point which 
doubtless gives to this question its chief interest in 
the minds of those who raise it. It is, according to 
my observation, not unfrequently declared by Chris- 
tian preachers that philosophy had, in ancient times, 
before the advent of Christianity, reached the ut- 
most limit of achievement which was possible for her 
in independence of "supernatural revelation," and 
had, through her failure to find the true or complete 
solution of the great problems of existence, demon- 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 263 

strated the essential impotence or limitation of " hu- 
man reason," and, consequently, the absolute need 
of light miraculously given from on high, in order to 
lead man where reason herself is quite unable either 
to lead or to follow. I suppose, now, the question 
we are considering to amount to the inquiry, whether 
the foregoing assertion is not strictly true ? 

I remark, in reply, that the foregoing assertion 
contains, by its form, much that is equivocal and 
misleading. It seems to presuppose, contrary to 
the words of Scripture itself, as also to the voice 
of philosophy, a complete and essential mechanical 
separation between human and divine intelligence, 
or between "human reason" and the divine mind. 
It seems to posit an opposition between the finite 
and the infinite, the natural and the supernatural, 
and, in each case, a degree of independence on the 
part of the former with reference to the latter, which, 
unless all the demonstrations of the foregoing lec- 
tures are at fault, both Scripture and "reason" re- 
pudiate. The Bible ascribes human understanding 
to the "Spirit of the Lord"; and "human reason," 
in the mouth of its worthiest and best-accredited 
spokesman before the advent of Christ (Aristotle), 
ascribed its own origin and power to God. 6 Reason 
claims no power of her own, out of organic depend- 
ence on the Absolute Spirit. But she does not, 
because by her own confession thus dependent for 
her power, therefore conclude that she has nothing 
to do except to lie absolutely inert upon the breast 
of the Absolute and so supinely wait for God to do 



264 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

for her her own proper work of intelligence; any- 
more than according" to Christian ethics, because 
God " worketh in " man, the latter can expect spirit- 
ually to prosper unless he also " work out " his own 
salvation. Reason, now, being the active function 
of a spirit thus divinely-created and divinely-sus- 
tained, did indeed accomplish far more in ancient 
Greece than is ever understood by those who thus 
glibly speak of its lamentable " failure." And it 
did this, not by attempting to soar away into far- 
off, inexperimental, and hidden mysteries, but by 
examining and, in its measure, truly knowing the 
world, as it lies at man's feet and exists in his 
experience, and man, as he exists for himself in 
self-consciousness, in intelligence and will and emo- 
tion, in society, also, and in religion. And the 
result was, further, the discovery of the true infinite 
revealed through the finite, of the Absolute as none 
other than the absolutely good, as perfect reason, 
as royal and divine mind, as God; the discovery, 
also, that the finite or " natural," exists and has its 
nature through " participation " (according to Pla- 
to's expression) in the ideal-absolute or (according 
to the Aristotelian description) in and by virtue of 
a process, which is prompted by instinctive ''love" 
of God and tends to reproduce, in the natural prod- 
uct, "so far as possible," the divine likeness; and 
so, in particular, that the highest duty and privilege 
of man, his perfection and his virtue, consist in be- 
coming like God, — and "to be like God," says 
Plato, "is to be holy, and just, and wise." Greek 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 265 

philosophy was not a failure. It was, in its way 
and measure, a demonstration of the experimental 
and everlasting truth of spiritualistic idealism, — a 
demonstration, of which the world can never afford 
to lose sight, and which Christian theology, to its 
lasting credit and profit, learned in its early days to 
turn to its own great advantage. And so it is safe 
to say that the Christian consciousness, on the side 
of its intellectual content, or, so to express it, of its 
intellectual self-consciousness, was richer and more 
thoroughly and manfully master of itself in those 
first centuries, when it was defining for itself and 
the world its grand dogmas, such as Trinity and 
Incarnation, than in many a subsequent century, 
when not only the freshness and power of its first 
inspiration had been largely lost, but philosophy 
also, swamped in the muddy shallows of pure mech- 
anism and of agnosticism, was no longer able to be 
to it anything but a thoroughly false guide. 

Now, Christian theology was able to use Greek 
philosophy as it did, only because — if I may thus 
express my meaning — the subject-matter of the 
former was continuous or, broadly speaking, of one 
piece with the subject-mater of the latter. Perhaps 
I shall presently be able to make my meaning 
plainer. Let me say, then, that the one great fact, 
the sense of which seems to me to be blurred in the 
form above given to the question under considera- 
tion, is this, that the revelation of God in Christ 
and in the Christian consciousness is not the con- 
tradiction, but the fulfilment, of the revelation of 



266 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

God in nature and in the universal or generic con- 
sciousness of man. " Christian experience," in the 
genuine sense of this expression, is the experience 
of " the perfect man." Christian knowledge is com- 
pleted knowledge. The perfect differs from the im- 
perfect, and the completed from the incomplete, 
rather in degree than in kind. Christian experience 
is an experience in which God is, confessedly, im- 
mediately concerned. But the experience of man- 
kind at large before the coming of Christ, and even 
to-day in regions where Christ is not known, neither 
was nor is an experience wholly without God. 
Greek philosophy was an attempt to comprehend, 
or to demonstrate the whole ideal content of, pre- 
Christian experience. It dealt with the only posi- 
tive data at its command; and the substantial result 
was to such a remarkable degree in harmony with 
the new and fuller consciousness which Christ ush- 
ered into the world, that Christian apologists have 
justly seen in it a striking "preparation" for Chris- 
tianity, while natural historians (as they may be 
called) of human intelligence have professed to see 
in it the root, from which Christianity could be 
explained as simply the necessary growth. 

It would seem, then, and it is undoubtedly true 
that all speculations as to what philosophy might 
discover without the aid of Christian experience are 
thoroughly idle. Philosophy, we must again re- 
peat, is nothing independently of experience; it 
claims to do nothing but comprehend experience; 
and if in Christianity human experience is filled up 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 267 

and rounded out to a greater degree of perfection 
and completeness than in any of its non-Christian 
forms, philosophy is ready and quick to perceive and 
acknowledge this and gratefully to draw from it the 
fuller lesson that it teaches. Yes, philosophy did 
need the light of Christianity, and her only protest 
can be and is against the notion that she, or that 
mankind at large, — one of whose noblest functions 
she is, — ever was, or is, or can be, something wholly 
profane and undivine, completely separate from and 
opposed to God, as, according to the shallow con- 
ception of a purely mechanical theology, the .finite 
is said to be separated from and only opposed to the 
infinite. In short, this whole business of setting re- 
ligion, on the one hand, and philosophy and science, 
on the other, over against each other, as if they 
were per se quite independent and rival, or even 
hostile, functions, should come to a perpetual end; 
for it all amounts simply — no matter who it is that 
is guilty of it — to a case of arbitrary, unnatural, and 
wicked putting asunder, on man's part, of things 
which God has joined together. These different 
"functions," as I have termed them, are not simply 
like so many tools, which a man may take up and 
lay down at will, — one of which has nothing what- 
ever to do with the other, and all of which have no 
necessary and essential relation to him that uses 
them. On the contrary, they are all organically 
one in, and all equally and essentially necessary to, 
the completed life and reality of man. The whole 
man implies them all, and each of them implies, for 



268 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

its ideal completeness, the whole man, in the com- 
plete and healthy exercise of all his functions. All 
of these distinctions of functions are abstractions, 
necessary, no doubt, in practice, but thoroughly 
misleading to him who forgets the purely practical 
necessity, in which they originate, and so treats them 
as absolute. The Christian Master did not say, "re- 
ligion" or "philosophy," but "the truth shall make 
you free." And this truth, as we saw, was to be both 
lived and known. It was to be present at once in 
the practical and in the theoretical "experience" of 
the "perfect man." It was to be the very life and 
substance of this experience, and of man himself. 
In the order of time, and especially of the time- 
conditioned experience of man, we may rightly say 
that life and practice precede theory, just as sensa- 
tion precedes intelligence. But the scientific exam- 
ination of experience, as conducted by philosophy, 
shows that the absolute or ideal condition of sensa- 
tion is intelligence itself. And so, universally, the 
final object and end- of" theory," or "knowledge," or 
"philosophy," with reference to all "life and prac- 
tice," or with reference. to all "experience" whatso- 
ever, is to show how the latter, all contingent as at 
first it appears to be, is itself conditioned by the 
non-contingent Absolute and Eternal, which it im- 
plicitly contains and reveals. This, as I have pre- 
viously indicated, is, "spiritual knowledge," for it is 
the knowledge of the Absolute as Eternal Spirit, 
and of "all things" as existing through and by Him, 
— not in the way of mechanico-fatalistic necessity, 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 269 

nor of mechanico-pantheistic identity, but in a spir- 
itual relation like that of the child to the father, 
where "limitation" is seen to be, not the obstacle, 
but the condition of substantial independence and 
freedom. This is knowledge of " the only true God," 
and "eternal life." And now, that the subject-mat- 
ter of this knowledge is written in infinitely larger, 
more legible and unmistakable characters "in the 
face of Jesus Christ," than anywhere else, I do not 
hesitate, in the name of Philosophy herself, to as- 
sert. That philosophy "needed" this object-lesson, 
may be asserted with equal confidence. "The life" 
needed to be ''made manifest," in all its fulness, in 
order that in all its fulness it might be known. Not 
that it was previously wholly unmanifested, by any 
means. God never left himself without a witness. 
He "by whom the worlds were made," the "eternal 
Son," was never absent from his work. It was not 
first eighteen hundred years ago that he became 
"the light of the world." No, from the creation of 
the world he — "God in the flesh," the infinite in the 
finite — was ever with the world and in it, as a spirit- 
ual, creative-redemptive, sustaining presence. Of 
the glory of this presence all men were, whether 
consciously or unconsciously, witnesses, so that those 
who denied it were "without excuse"; while philoso- 
phy loudly and effectively proclaimed it. And yet 
the light was partly veiled; the life was not made 
fully manifest; so that, in more than one most im- 
portant respect, the devotion of the most pious heart 
and the worship of the clearest head were addressed 



270 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

to a God "unknown," (i. e., incompletely known). 
Then Jesus came and, by living "the life," demon- 
strated that he was the Life, as well as the Truth 
and the Way; and that he was the true Life, not as 
pure individual, in separation and distinction from 
God, but in organic union and oneness with God; and 
not, again, in hostile separation from the world, but 
the rather as the One, the everlasting Word, who 
eternally gives himself for the life of the world, — the 
One who, were he to cease to "give," and to give 
himself, the world would cease to be. And how 
wonderful was the human consciousness which Christ 
awakened, the consciousness of human emptiness 
and of divine riches, the hungering and thirsting 
after righteousness, fainting for the bread of life; 
and how wonderfully did he show himself, and God in 
him, to be the "bread of Life," the very "bread of 
the world! " The potentialities of human experience 
were all now fulfilled. What had been before only 
implicit became explicit. The true and complete 
and perfect life of man, the "salvation," nay, the 
realization, of his true being, as something to be ac- 
complished by simply taking God for one's strength; 
the losing of one's life, in order to find it, or, the 
penitent abandonment of the finite self, with all its 
load of weaknesses and sins, in order to find the 
true self in the spiritual infinite; the reconciliation 
of the world and of man to God, and the possibil- 
ity of such reconciliation as founded on the eternal 
mediation of the incarnate Word (of which Christ's 
death on the cross was the most signal and the 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 271 

practically necessary demonstration) ; all this blessed 
content of spiritual _and of absolute theoretical truth 
was contained in the perfect object-lesson of the life 
and death of Jesus of Nazareth. To the world and 
to man, as the scene and the home of the growing 
finite, — of the finite, namely, as involved, in human 
consciousness, in the still unfinished process of real- 
izing to itself its own and the world's infinite con- 
tent, — this lesson had all the value of an absolutely 
new revelation. And yet the substance of the truth 
revealed was, in itself, in no wise new; for it was 
eternal. The life and death of Christ — as I have 
once before said — were in no sense the revelation of 
a new disposition or of a change of nature, whether 
in the everlasting and unchangeable God or in the 
nature of things. They were rather a new and com- 
plete demonstration of the eternal nature of God and 
of the eternal "counsel of his will." The demon- 
stration was needed, and "in the fulness of time," — 
or, when the time for this wonderful fruitage was 
fully ripe, — it came. The revelation was made, 
through forms of sense and in events of space and 
time, of spiritual truths and realities that transcend 
and condition and explain space and time, with all 
that these contain. Then the revelatory demonstra- 
tion was fulfilled, not only of that which was spoken 
by the prophets, but also of the creative Word of the 
Lord, as present in the world itself and in the hearts 
and thoughts of men. And this revelation still con- 
tinues. It did not end with the death of Jesus. The 
rather, it first fully began after his death. His mis- 



272 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

sion was to show men "the Father." "He that hath 
seen me," he declared, " hath seen the Father." And 
yet, as he plainly intimated, (and as we have already 
noticed in a previous lecture,) the true sight of him 
had nothing to do with physical vision, but was the 
rather hindered by it. The true sight of him was 
spiritual sight. "A little while and \tkeri\ ye shall 
see me; because I go to the Father." When he was 
out of their physical sight, the true sight, the sight 
through and of the Spirit, was to begin, and to lead 
them into all truth. Then would occur the full and 
real "revelation." And this revelation, I say, still 
continues. For it is, I repeat, something spiritual, 
and therefore living. The revelation is a spiritual 
light. And it was, and evermore is, "the life " — not 
mere words, or physical presence — that is "the light 
of men." Far be it from me to detract, or to seem 
to detract, by the utterance of a single syllable, from 
the unspeakable value and significance of the re-* 
corded words of the Master of the Christian world. 
But this value and significance will be wholly missed, 
if there ever comes a time when the life that they 
express is no longer lived. "Ye are the light of the 
world," says Christ, to all those in whom the Chris- 
tian life, the Christian experience, the Christian con- 
sciousness, has been kindled and in whom it continues 
as a vital flame to glow. When Christianity is no 
longer lived, it is no longer capable of being under- 
stood. When Christianity is no longer lived, the 
"light of the world" is extinguished. 

The practical demonstration, then, of the "Chris- 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 273 

tian religion " is Christianity itself as a living power 
in man, illuminating his understanding, purifying his 
will, and restoring him, from the lowest depths to 
the topmost heights of his living experience, to him- 
self, i. e. y to the possession, the mastery, the realiza- 
tion of himself in his true and perfect quality, as a 
son or daughter of the Lord God Almighty. This 
is called, pre-eminently, " religion," or "having re- 
ligion." The theoretical demonstration of it is "phi- 
losophy" — or call it, if you will, speculative theology 
or Christian knowledge. It is the demonstration of 
the eternal content and foundation of the Christian 
consciousness. And it is the demonstration that 
"human reason " is not confounded by the content 
of the Christian consciousness, but is strengthened, 
illuminated, satisfied, nay, completed by it. It is not 
a demonstration that the Christian life, the " Chris- 
tian consciousness," can now be dispensed with. It 
is rather a demonstration of the absolute necessity 
of this life and consciousness to the completed real- 
ity and perfection of man. And so the life and the 
knowledge point to and imply each other; and both 
are inseparable in the realized ideal of the "perfect 
man," knowing the true God and Jesus Christ whom 
he hath sent. 

We are now prepared to admit the assertion of our 
imaginary questioner in this sense, viz., that the ever- 
lasting " light of the world " shone far, far less brightly 
in the experience of mankind before the coming of 
Christ, than thereafter; and that, as philosophy is 
nothing without the light of experience, it needed 



274 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the new and added light which Christianity brought. 
But the assertion must be decidedly repelled, if the 
meaning of it is that Christianity involves, in any 
sense, the miraculous supersedure of reason or its 
disgrace. 7 

On the other hand, I trust that nothing more need 
be said by way of answer to the first question above 
raised, respecting the sufficiency of faith, as " abbre- 
viated knowledge," independently of the fuller and 
more explicit forms of reasoned intelligence. The 
idea to be inculcated is, of course, by no means that 
all Christians are to be philosophers; but that the 
leaders and teachers of the Christian world, by whom 
the judgment of the world at large with respect to 
Christianity is most apt to be determined, and from 
whom the tone of Christian life in the humbler ranks 
of the Church must, inevitably, to a large extent, 
take its coloring, should in the fullest sense know in 
whom they have believed, and be able to render, for 
the hope that is in them, the demonstrative reason 
which the nature of the case at once demands and 
supplies. Who shall overestimate the manly strength 
and comfort which come to all who seek to love and 
serve God, when their pastors, being after Jehovah's 
own heart, are able to feed them "with wisdom and 
knowledge " ? 

Richer "food" of this sort than that which the 
true Christian pastor can offer is not to be con- 
ceived, if that is true which the Apostle says of the 
Christian pastor's divine Master, "In him are hid 
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge " (Col, 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 275 

ii. 3). That this saying of St. Paul is a true one, 
that Christ is indeed " the Truth," that the spiritual 
knowledge of him is the key to all absolute intelli- 
gence, and that in this knowledge lies the indispen- 
sable way to man's perfection, to his true, self-mas- 
tering Freedom and to eternal Life, — of all this I am 
profoundly convinced, and I shall wish that these 
lectures had never been delivered, if they accomplish 
nothing toward the propagation of this conviction. 

If Christ is indeed the Truth, if in knowing him as 
the Son of God we know God, the unconditioned 
and everlasting fount of all being, and in knowing 
him as the creative principle of all finite existence 
we are introduced to the knowledge of the essence 
of all such existence, it is obvious that the " Com- 
parative Philosophic Content of Christianity" is very 
great; — that, indeed, it is so great that a greater 
cannot be conceived. And it is obvious that philos- 
ophy, finding this to be the case, must admit and 
approvingly reiterate the claim of Christianity to be 
called "absolute religion." And this has indeed been 
done, through the mouth of the deepest, most com- 
prehensive, and most instructive philosopher of mod- 
ern times; — I refer, of course, to Hegel. 8 

By what standard or principle is the philosophic 
content of a religion to be measured? By none other, 
assuredly, than the one by which the content of phi- 
losophy itself, universally, is measured. And philos- 
ophy's standard is simply Reality, as apprehended in 
and through spiritual self-consciousness, — the true 
consciousness or knowledge of the Self, as Spirit. 



276 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

All consciousness whatsoever, as we have seen, has 
the form of self-consciousness, and all knowledge, of 
self-knowledge; and the Real, which knowledge ap- 
prehends (or else it is not knowledge), must and can, 
accordingly, only be, in form, self-known. And we 
have tried to intimate — the present was no time for ex- 
haustive de-monstration — how, along with, and condi- 
tioned upon, the development in man of his true, sub- 
stantial self-consciousness, comes the demonstrative 
consciousness or knowledge of the Absolute as Spirit, 
as Person, as God, and of the world as a reality, 
whose true significance, being divinely derived, is 
also, though dependently, spiritual. And this, of 
course, is possible only on condition that the self- 
consciousness of man contain, either explicitly or 
implicitly, that which some Christian psychologists 
call the element of "God-consciousness," as a part 
of itself, and, on the other hand, the universally ad- 
mitted element of " world-consciousness." And we 
have sought further to indicate how the self-con- 
sciousness of man, as a living spirit, may and does 
include both these elements — namely, by virtue of 
what may summarily be termed the organic con- 
nection of the individual with the finite universe, on 
the one hand, and with God, the Absolute, on the 
other — and how real knowledge of both God and the 
world may result from the development of the re- 
spective " elements," without our being necessarily 
forced to any such absurd conclusion as that man is 
mechanically and numerically identical, either with 
God, or with the sensible universe, from both of 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 277 

which he distinguishes himself. Philosophy is thus 
the knowledge of God and the world, in and through 
the knowledge of man. The knowledge in question 
is living and spiritual knowledge. It is knowledge 
by a living and spiritual being, and has for its object 
varying degrees and forms of living and spiritual 
reality. 

Of this knowledge the ideal and the conditions 
are exemplified, nay, rather, actualized, in the Christ. 
The Man, whose thought was the divine thought, 
whose life was divine life, and whose very being 
consisted in his being " one with " the divine " Fa- 
ther"; the everlasting Word, who, as the principle 
of the world's existence, was and evermore is the 
true light and life of the world; how has he not 
indeed in himself " all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge ? " How shall not he, who has spiritual 
"knowledge of the Son of God," who, united to him 
as the branch is united to the vine, participates in 
his self-consciousness and so comes to the true con- 
sciousness of "the perfect man" and " unto the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," — 
how, I say, shall he, who thus has "the mind of 
Christ," and is "renewed in knowledge after the 
image of him that created him," not be adjudged — ■ 
unless all the principles of knowledge are to be 
denied — to be in the requisite intellectual position 
for knowing all things ? Not that he, not that the 
" philosopher," is to be able all at once, or, perhaps, 
ever, to be informed about all the detail of the 
world or (in the same sense) about the unfathomable 



278 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

riches of the divine nature; but that, in Aristotelian 
phrase, the What of the world and of the divine 
nature, the principle and conditioning, or spiritual, 
essence, shall be known to him and shall illuminate 
all his intelligence, — be the latter rich or poor in 
the knowledge of particular, empirical facts. The 
substance of the unlettered Christian's living faith 
—not of his merely abstract and formal "belief" — 
touches, though in an other way, the same goal 
with the philosopher's loftiest demonstrations. And 
this, I repeat, because both have to do with the 
whole substance of living reality, and not merely, 
like the special sciences, with some particular as- 
pect, phase, or department of reality, in abstraction 
from all else. 

The philosophic history of religion, now, notes in 
the different "religions," as also in the different 
"philosophies," the symptomatic expression of so 
many diverse stages reached by man in the en- 
deavor to attain to full and complete self-conscious- 
ness, and through this to reach the true knowledge 
of the world and of God; in this latter respect seek- 
ing "after the Lord," as St. Paul says, "if haply 
they might find him," who is " not far from every one 
of us" (Acts xvii. 27), and who "said not to the 
seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain " (Is. xlv. 19). In 
other words, the conceptions of God, or of the Ab- 
solute, or of the absolute Power of the universe, and 
the like, which are contained in and determine the 
character of the different " religions," depend, ideally, 
on and correspond to the varying degrees to which 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 279 

the founders and adherents of these religions have, 
or have not, come in practice to the consciousness of 
man's true nature and substance as a spiritual per- 
sonality. The like is true with regard to the differ- 
ent so-called philosophies, if in place of the expres- 
sion, "in practice," you substitute in the foregoing 
statement the words, "in theory." 

In all of them — religions as well as philosophies 
— ^so far as they are imperfect, we may thus see 
arrested attempts of man seeking to " come to him- 
self," and to be in feeling and in intelligence at 
peace with himself. Another way of stating the 
case, as it regards especially the religions of man- 
kind, is to say that in all of them man" is exhibited 
in the process of trying to find his spiritual centre. 
Not that he always is explicitly aware that he has 
such a centre, or that while he is seeking it he 
necessarily knows just what he is seeking. But 
always there is at least the vague unrest, the sense, 
variously manifested, of the individual's insufficiency 
in himself, of his need of supplementing or complet- 
ing himself by practically identifying with himself, 
for the supply of his needs and the aversion of his 
dangers, a power other and greater than, but yet 
in some way akin to, himself. And at every stage the 
power in question is conceived after the image of the 
consciousness which man has of himself. At the low- 
est stage where the " spirit in man " is scarcely more 
than an unactualized potentiality and the life of its 
nominal possessor is as nearly as possible a purely 
natural one, the power is conceived as a natural ob- 



280 PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ject or as hiding itself in such an object, — a stone, a 
bush, the earth, the sun, or the heavens. At a higher 
stage, where man has arrived at the abstract, but, 
essentially, only negative, conviction that he is in 
in his essence not-natural, he has a corresponding 
conception of the absolute Power, by practical or 
literal identification with which he must secure pres- 
ent help and final release. " Release," I say; for the 
conviction that the " natural," as such, is foreign to 
him, carries with it the pessimistic sense of it as 
his essential enemy and as the seat of nought but 
evil, and subjection to it or association with it is 
necessarily looked upon as an evil and a burden. 
But as the conviction under consideration is only 
negative; since it only consists in the certain belief 
that the essential is not the natural, that the soul 
is not the body, that the Absolute is not subject to 
the forms of space and time, and that the latter, 
together with all that they condition, is purely phe- 
nomenal and illusory; and since therefore, the posi- 
tive conception of substantial spiritual personality, 
and of the natural as its not unreal matrix, its 
friendly foster-mother, and its willing instrument, 
is wanting; the conception of the absolute Power 
becomes equally negative; it is the everlasting Nay, 
Nirvana. The philosophic and the religious con- 
ception, it is seen, thus run hand in hand. 

I mention the foregoing cases merely by way of 
illustration. A complete account of all the cases 
possible, and that are illustrated in the history of 
religions, would require a volume. That in the 



PHILOSOPHIC CONTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 281 

Christian life, and in philosophy, drawing instruc- 
tion from the Christian consciousness, man truly 
comes to himself, and so is, with reason, both in 
mind and heart at peace, — enjoying the freedom 
which truth, known and practiced, begets, and par- 
ticipating even now in eternal life, — this is a con- 
viction, to the confirmation of which in your minds 
I heartily wish that the present course of lectures 
may have contributed. May the God of Love enable 
us all, by an intelligent confession, to bear witness 
to the truth that Christ is " the wisdom of God "; 
and may the Lord of all power and might, who is 
the author and giver of all good things, graft in our 
and in all hearts the love of his name, increase in us 
true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of 
his great mercy keep us in the same, to everlasting 
life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 



APPENDIX 



NOTES TO LECTURE I. 

Note i, Page 6. 
L. Oscar, Die Religion zurilckgefuhrt auf ihren Ursprung, 
Basel, 1874, p. 2. 

Note 2, Page 6. 
Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Religion, Werke, 
Bd. XI, Berlin, 1840, p. 3. 

Note 3, Page 9. 
H. Spencer, Synthetic Philosophy, First Principles, p. 

Note 4, Page 10. 
I am, of course, not unaware that Mr. Spencer, as chief 
spokesman of Agnosticism in our day, is so far from seeing, 
or desiring to see, anything hostile to religion in his doctrine, 
that he, the rather, professes to find in the latter the impreg- 
nable bulwark of ' ' true religion. " That ' ' our own and all 
other existence is a mystery absolutely and forever beyond 
our comprehension, contains more of true religion than all 
the dogmatic theology ever written," {First Principles, p. 112). 
1 ' True religion " consists, namely, in the recognition of the 
fore-mentioned absolute "mystery." Its "subject-matter is 
that which passes the sphere of experience " and so ' ' tran- 
scends knowledge" (id. p. 17), i. e., the "Unknowable." So 
far, therefore, as religion professes really to know the object 

(283) 



284 APPENDIX. 

of its belief, so far as its * ' subject-matter " is definitely and 
positively formulated as an object of ostensible knowledge, 
and so far, in particular, as it declares and claims to know 
the Absolute, or God, as Spirit, and the root and goal of 
"our own and all other existence" as themselves also spirit- 
ual, just so far must religion be pronounced the victim — or 
propagator — of illusion. 

Now Mr. Spencer is not to be charged with the slightest 
insincerity, or with any other impurity of motive. The nega- 
tivism of his religious philosophy follows of necessity from a 
certain theory of knowledge, which he holds in common with 
a long line of predecessors in the history of British speculation, 
extending from the Middle Ages down to the present day. 
According to this theory, all knowledge proper, whatsoever, 
is limited by sensible conditions. The conditions are not 
merely instrumental to knowledge, but are themselves held 
to be the final objective limit of knowledge. In other words, 
all real knowledge is held to be, in nature and method, 
mathematico-physical, and to have, for its only object, the 
sensibly ' ' phenomenal. " 

Now, admitting this theory of knowledge, it follows, with 
truismatic evidence, that the ' ' subject-matter " of religion — 
provided that the latter be not wholly an illusion — must be 
the ' ' Unknowable. " But the true conclusion from this the- 
ory is, the rather, that religion is indeed an illusion. For, 
as has often been pointed out, (compare, among others, John 
Caird's Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, chap, i.,) from 
the acceptance of the theory in question as an exhaustively true 
and complete account of the whole nature of knowledge it 
follows that the assertion of the existence of the Absolute Un- 
Knowable is impossible and absurd. And religion, so far as 
this is regarded as its true and only ' ' subject-matter, " is a 
pure hallucination. 



APPENDIX. 285 

There have been many, among those theologians who have 
ostensibly stood for the defence of religion during the last few 
centuries, who have been inclined to coquette with the agnos- 
tic doctrine and some who have completely adopted it. The 
result, naturally, has never been a reinvigoration of "faith" 
or of the religious life. It is one of the happier signs of our 
times that the nominal ' ' gift, " which the Agnostic ' ' Greek " 
brings to religion in our day, is looked upon with well-nigh 
universal suspicion. 

Note 5, Page 15. 
At the beginning, in the seventeenth century, of the mod- 
ern period in philosophy, the modern mind, in the persons 
of its most conspicuous intellectual leaders, sought, so to 
speak, to insulate itself, and, in particular, to cut itself off, 
as much as possible, from all connection with that historic 
past, from which it was in fact itself but an historic growth. 
The attempt was made to effectuate a solution of intellectual 
continuity, by placing the past under a ban of disgrace. This 
solution, breaking-up, or analysis, had its relative justification; 
but only its relative and temporary justification; and that as a 
step in a process which could become complete only in a final 
synthesis, enriched, indeed, by all the acquisitions of modern 
science, but not excluding the riches of the past; the rather, 
uniting past and present, or the synthetic and the analytic 
sides of human experience, in the concrete unity of one un- 
impaired and all-significant whole. To the achievement of 
this final synthesis the greatest and most significant contribu- 
tions have, thus far, been made in German philosophy. Brit- 
ish thought has to the greatest extent, until recently, remained 
in that ' ' irretrievably analytic " frame of mind, which J. S. 
Mill recognized as having, in his own case, all the quality 
of a disease. It has remained practically insulated, with re- 



286 APPENDIX. 

spect not only to Greek but also to German philosophy. 
And this insulation has been result, as much as cause, of that 
more radical separation or estrangement of the inquiring mind 
from the eternal problems of philosophy — which are also the 
perennial problems of life — that is necessarily connected with 
excessive devotion to the methods of mechanical analysis. 
Thus it is that in our day one of the most urgent of intellect- 
ual and spiritual needs is the revival, in philosophy, of the 
historic sense, and that as one of the most direct means for 
restoring the philosophic sense and so leading, ultimately, to 
the renewed and convincing demonstration of that solid ob- 
jective basis for the vital interests, — and realities — of human 
life, the very existence of which seems, nowadays, to be, for 
many men of serious and, in other respects, cultivated minds, 
a matter of grave doubt. 



NOTES TO LECTURE II. 

Note i, Page 26. 

To J. S. Mill the personally identical self is an "impene- 
trable, inner covering, "an " inexplicable tie " or ' ' bond of 
some sort," which, says he, "to me, constitutes my Ego." 
See note to J. S. Mill's new edition of James Mill's Analysis 
of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, Vol. II., p. 175. From 
the belief in this "bond" or "tie" it is, according to J. S. 
Mill, impossible to escape. But of it no rational account is 
said to be possible. It remains as a "final inexplicability. " 
See J. S. Mill's Examination of the Philosophy of Sir William 
Hamilton, chap. vii. 

Herbert Spencer declares that the belief in self is one that 
"no hypothesis enables us to escape." See Spencer's First 



APPENDIX. 287 

Principles, p. 64. On the following page Spencer affirms 
that this- belief is one which finds "no justification in rea- 
son." This simply means that the search for a fundamental, 
spiritual, living, and absolute reality, like that of Self, by 
psychological inquiries pursued under the limitations, and 
determined by the presuppositions, of the method of purely 
physical science, must necessarily be fruitless. The very fact 
that the search, thus prosecuted, is hopelessly unavailing, 
while yet the "belief in self" persists in the mind of the in- 
quirer as one which "no hypothesis enables us to escape," 
should, apparently, be of itself sufficient to convince him and 
the whole cohort of his followers that the method in which 
he and they put all their trust, and which they style ' ' experi- 
mental," is — not, indeed, in its proper sphere, inexperimen- 
tal, but — abstract, partial, incomplete, and not commensurate 
with the whole nature and content of experience; requiring, 
therefore, to be supplemented by a larger and more liberal, 
but not less strictly scientific, method, which is not unknown 
to philosophy and which, not being arbitrarily conceived and 
forcibly imposed on experience, but simply founded in and 
dictated by the recognition of experience in its whole nature, 
is alone entitled to be termed fully and without qualification 
"experimental." I may add, pertinently, that Mr. Spencer's 
confession of the inevitable necessity of the belief in self is, 
on his own part, purely theoretical, and without further or 
ulterior consequence for the development of his psychological 
and ethical views. His psychology remains a ' " psychologie sans 
dme" and his ethics is made to conform as much as possible 
to the psychology. Take, for illustration, his treatment of 
the question of the "freedom of the will." If "free will" is 
a phrase having any positive, substantial meaning whatever, 
it means, or points to, a function of the true self, or 
1 ' Ego. " The true self, now, being, according to Mr. Spen- 



288 APPENDIX. 

cer's confession, something which we must believe to be 
existent, but which is for him ' ' unknowable, " he is in strict 
reason debarred from all right to discuss the question of free- 
dom. He does ostensibly discuss it, nevertheless, and in so 
doing forgets all about the true, but "unknowable" self, pro- 
ceeding as though the whole and true self or Ego were com- 
pletely and only identical with the mechanical aggregate of 
"knowable" internal states, or "feelings," which at any 
given instant make up the sum total of the content of our 
empirical, sense-conditioned consciousness. The view of the 
conscious self thus obtained is only static, not dynamic, and 
it is not strange that the will, considered in relation to this 
" self, " seems purely phenomenal, a substanceless, mechani- 
cally determined state or "point of view," and freedom an 
1 ' illusion. " The free-will ' ' illusion, " says Mr. Spencer, con- 
sists in supposing that "at each moment the ego is something 
more than the aggregate of feelings or ideas, actual and nas- 
cent, which then exists" {Psychology, Vol. I., p. 500). But 
this supposition, as we have above seen, is precisely one that 
"no hypothesis enables us to escape." 

The members of the Scotch or Intuitional school, on the 
contrary, have the peculiarity and merit of insisting that the 
confession of objects of "necessary belief" shall not remain 
merely verbal, but shall bear fruit in the further determination 
of psychological and ethical notions. And so — to remain by 
the case in hand — they insist upon freedom, as an attribute 
of the true self. But inasmuch as to them, just as much as 
to their opponents of the "necessitarian" school, there is 
wanting the full and substantial conception of the true self as 
a spiritual reality, whose essence is activity, and whose activity 
is organic (i e. , takes the form and has indeed the nature of 
self-realization; — see further above, Lecture VII.), it results 
that they, too, are unable to vindicate for the word freedom a 



APPENDIX. 289 

substantial meaning. The whole discussion is carried on by 
them in the terms and with the categories of pure mechanism. 
The resulting conception of "freedom" is purely formal, 
negative, contentless, and falls a too easy prey to necessitarian 
argument. (See again Lecture VII, above, and F. H. Brad- 
ley's Ethical Studies, Essay I, London, 1876). 

Note 2, Page 27. 
See Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part III, 
Sections 7, 8, and 10; and Part IV, Sec. 6. No scholar 
needs to be reminded of the existence of the edition of 
Hume's Philosophical Works, edited by the late Prof. T. H. 
Green and T. H. Grose (London: Longmans, Green, & 
Co. ) and of the very special value and importance of Prof. 
Green's General Introduction to the same; but it is peculiarly 
needful that the attention of the beginner in philosophic 
studies should early be directed to it. In his Introduction 
Prof. Green examines the whole ground-work of the psycho- 
logical philosophy of Locke and his successors, exhibiting the 
ground of its weakness as a theory of knowledge. Here, 
says Prof. J. Croome Robertson (in Mind, Jan., 1883, p. 7), 
"Locke and the others are charged with assuming for the 
explanation of mental experience that which is itself unintel- 
ligible except as the result of a mental function. " This state- 
ment covers also the ground of the objection made in our 
text to any attempt to find in empirical, or purely sensational, 
psychology, a substitute for the philosophic theory of knowl- 
edge. Prof. Robertson adds that "so far as it bears against 
Locke in particular, the criticism, it must be allowed, is not 
to be repelled." Nor, he continues, "did Berkeley and 
Hume define their ground with sufficient care, nor proceed 
far enough in the way of systematic construction, to evade 
the criticism as it was to be levelled also against them." It 



290 APPENDIX. 

seems significant that Mr. Huxley, in his volume on Hume 
in the ' ' English Men of Letters " series, makes no mention 
of Messrs. Green and Grose's edition of the philosophical 
works of Hume. 

Note 3, Page 27. 
In all that I have to say in the text concerning psychology 
it will be understood that I think of psychology not as in- 
cluding all that, in possible agreement with the etymology 
of the term, may conceivably be comprehended under it. 
Thus, for example, Aristotle brings into his treatise "Con- 
cerning the Soul" his most important contributions to the 
philosophic theory of knowledge. I employ the word psy- 
chology according to the now prevalent usage, as denoting 
the analytic and inductive science of mental phenomena. As 
such science, psychology simply takes cognizance of the 
phenomena which it finds, noting their order of co-existence 
and sequence, and so determining their "laws" or rules of 
order. The ostensible "processes" which it thus observes 
and analyzes, — sequences and other changes among given 
mental states — are modal, and not causal; they are mechan- 
ical, and not organic. But as the modal and mechanical 
always depends on, and is but the symbol of, the organic 
and, if I may thus express myself, creatively causal, it appears 
that the apparent processes observed by psychology are, for 
pure intelligence, its own product. They are not the organic- 
causal process of intelligence itself. On this whole subject 
compare the Article by Prof. J. Croome Robertson, on "Psy- 
chology and Philosophy," in Mind, Jan., 1883-. 

Note 4, Page 29. 
Mr. Spencer himself also has the notion of the final identity 
of the facts of physiology and the facts of psychology — or, in 



APPENDIX. 291 

his language, of "matter and mind" — in the "unknowable" 
Absolute. But the identity which he conceives is abstract, 
mechanical, and exclusive of difference, and not concrete, 
organic, and inclusive of difference. 

Note 5, Page 31. 
See Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, passim. 

Note 6, Page 36. 
It is but a few years ago that Mr. J. S. Mill was entertaining 
and astonishing the reflecting world in Great Britain arid 
America with the attempt to show how the matter-of-fact 
belief in the existence of both object and subject — respectively 
identified by him with "external world " and "mind " — could 
be justified, on the basis of a theory which reduces the whole 
substance and range of knowledge to a mechanical ' ' series 
of conscious states." See Mill's Examination of the Philosophy 
of Sir William Hamilton, chaps, xi. xii. 

Note 7, Page $j. 
See Leibnitz's Nouveaux Essais sur Ventendement humain. In 
this work, which is composed in the form of a dialogue, 
Leibnitz follows, Book by Book, chapter by chapter, and 
paragraph by paragraph, the course of Locke's discussion in 
his Essay on Human Understanding ; commenting, in a tone 
of utmost liberality, on the successive positions adopted by 
Locke; warmly applauding the many views of Locke, which 
meet with his own approval, but also laying bear the weak- 
nesses of Locke's theories with equal unreserve; and performing, 
too, in this latter connection, not merely the negative task of 
the purely destructive critic, but also the positive, constructive 
one, which he only can perform, who is deeply familiar with 
the past history and the perennial nature of the problems of 



292 APPENDIX. 

philosophy. Leibnitz used to say of the " monads," which 
played a fundamental role in his philosophy, that each of them 
was "big with the future." Of the mind and doctrine of 
Leibnitz it may be said that they were equally fructified through 
absorption and comprehension of the best wisdom of the past 
and the minutest and most varied knowledge of his own times, 
and that they are big with germs that have borne abundant 
fruit in the subsequent progress of philosophy in Germany. 
It suggests no favorable comment on the philosophic interest 
of the countrymen -of Locke that the above-mentioned reply 
of Leibnitz to Locke has never (so far as I can ascertain) been 
translated into English. 

Note 8, Page 40. 
See, in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the first parts, under 
the head of "Transcendental ^Esthetic" and "Transcendental 
Analytic. " I think that I may properly and usefully refer any 
learner, who may be interested in the subject of this Lecture, 
to my critical version of the argument of Kant's Critique, pub- 
lished in Griggs s Philosophical Classics, Chicago, 1883. 

Note 9, Page 40. 
For, as I have already intimated, following the strict re- 
quirements of the method in question, no such form or 
faculty of synthesis as memory can be either posited or recog- 
nized as existing; and without memory no synthesis whatever 
of sequent "impressions" or "ideas" is possible. 

Note 10, Page 41. 
In the first, or constructive, half of his Critique of Pure 
Reason Kant proceeds as if the supposition mentioned in the 
text were, not only relatively, but absolutely and unquali- 
fiedly, true. 



APPENDIX. 293 

Note ii, Page 43. 
Such as the theory of a realm of "things in themselves," 
assumed by Kant in accordance with the wholly arbitrary 
procedure referred to in the foregoing note. The "things in 
themselves " are "objects" conceived in complete mechanical 
separation from the subject of knowledge, hence as wholly 
foreign to and inaccessible for it, and hence, again, as wholly 
"unknowable." The ground of this gratuitous and, strictly 
taken, unthinkable hypothesis lies, as I trust the further pro- 
gress of our discussions will make sufficiently evident to 
the reflecting, in Kant's naive but wholly inexperimental 
conception of the subject-agent of knowledge as, like its sup- 
posed object, a thing, and not as a person; as essentially limited, 
like the body or the brain, by and to a definite locality in 
space and time, and not as a spirit which, by its intelligence, 
shares in a nature that transcends and conditions space and 
time and is in potential organic unity with all things, as well 
as with their absolute creative source and condition. 

Note 12, Page 43. 
Toward the recognition and full appreciation of this ex- 
perimental truth, in all its broad significance, Kant appears, 
in his several ' ' Critiques, " as one who is blindly, yet ener- 
getically, pushing forward; blindly, because clouds cast by the 
philosophical formalism and sensationalism of his age ob- 
scured and limited his intellectual horizon; yet enei'getically, 
because moved by the strong and faithful impulses of an 
unusually deep and vigorous living experience. The same 
struggle is significantly continued in Fichte; while, with 
Hegel, the truth in question obtains complete recognition. 
The same truth was clearly perceived and expressed by Aris- 
totle. See in particular Aristotle's-Zte Anima, Book III. 



294 APPENDIX. 

Note 13, Page 45, 
Existence means only being objective, and to be objective means 
to be in organic correlation with a subjective, i. e. to be knowable. 

Note 14, Page 47. 

The case referred to in the text is one in which sensible 
imagination abstracts, or seeks to abstract, from all its own 
forms and contents, and still fancies, or tries to fancy, that 
it has a remainder or product, which, if germane to any fac- 
ulty of intelligence and so capable of being apprehended or 
known by any, is germane to it {i. e., to sensible imagina- 
tion). The remainder, naturally, is indeed nought (0), = 
Ding-an-sich, the "Unknowable." 

A case in illustration, where something does appear to re- 
main after abstraction, and which is therefore more easily 
seized, is that of the ordinary, popular conception of time 
and space as real containers or receptacles, and nothing else; 
— "baskets," as it were, in which a world unrelated to them 
is contained. 

Note 15, Page 49. 
See above, p. 38 et seq. 

Note 16, Page 50. 
This means simply that the self-conscious intelligence of 
the individual is finite, or conditionally — not essentially — 
subject to limiting relations of space and time; or, again, 
that it has a developmental history. Eternal in its nature — 
as we have occasion more fully to notice in Lecture V. 
— it is temporal in its fortunes. There is, in other words, 
a particular time and place, when and where it first becomes 
aware of its particular objects. It is in this way, only, that it 
is subject to mechanical contingency. But the temporal his- 



APPENDIX. 295 

tory of intelligence has nothing to do with its essential nature. 
Locke, however, and many others, who have followed him, 
seek (ostensibly) the absolute science of knowledge in its con- 
tingent (human) history. 

Note 17, Page 52. 
According to Hegel's truthful and beautiful definition of 
philosophy: — "Die Philosophie ist nur diess, sich uberall zu 
Hause ftnden." 

Note 18, Page 54. 
And yet Kant considers the faculty of human intelligence 
as something which is wholly conditioned upon the particu- 
lar and contingent constitution of the human race, the latter 
being regarded, in agreement with our observation above, 
under note 11, as an aggregate of particular things or indi- 
viduals, who are the special ' ' subjects " of this intelligence. 
It is this which Schelling has in view, when he says (in his 
Philosophische Briefe uber Dogmalismus und Kriticismus, Werke, 
Bd. I, p. 295) that "in the Critique of Pure Reason the fac- 
ulty of intelligence is regarded as something peculiar, but not 
necessary, to the subject. " In other words, it is held that in 
an absolute subject of intelligence, such as God, intelligence 
is something wholly and absolutely different in kind and es- 
sential nature from what it is in man; so that no positive in- 
ference can be made from the latter to the former. The fact 
lis, the rather — and the total tendency of Kant's own demon- 
strations is wholly in the direction of this fact — that to com- 
pletely experimental inquiry human intelligence presents 
itself as possessing, in spite of the contingency of much of 
its special subject-matter and even as the condition of its 
having any subject-matter whatsoever, implicitly and really 
an universal and I may even, say an absqlute nature; a nature 



296 APPENDIX. 

which must be presupposed and understood, in order to 
understand the specific differences — such as they are — of 
"human intelligence"; a nature, therefore, which transcends 
the peculiarities of the particular individual or race, and by 
his participation in which the individual transcends himself 
(as individual) and is truly an intelligent person, a spiritual 
being, in living connection with the Absolute Being, and so 
himself potentially infinite. 



NOTES TO LECTURE III. 

Note i, Page 57. 
Droyssen, Grundriss der His tor ik, 3d ed., p. 54. 

Note 2, Page 59. 
Matthew Arnold, Contemporary Review, xxiv. 988, cited by 
F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, London, 1876, p. 282. 
Mr. Arnold's original use of the expression cited in the text 
is innocent enough. His own subsequent treatment of the 
1 ' question " is that of the philosophical ' ' tyro " indeed. 

Note 3, Page 63. 
1 ' Matter " and ' ' force " are the names which physical 
science, as such, gives to the essence of physical existence 
only provisionally or, rather, symbolically. A ' ' philosophy, " 
which allows no authority but that of physical science and 
no conceptions but physical conceptions, is either materialistic, 
and dogmatically asserts the unconditional and all-conditioning 
validity of the conceptions of brute, inert matter and blind 
force; or else, it is, more warily and justly, agnostic, and 



APPENDIX. 297 

declares the absolute essence or foundation of existence to be 
unknowable. The next step is to proceed by a short cut to 
the identification of the unknowable, but materialistically con- 
ceived, essence of physical existence with ' ' God. " This is 
a doubtful compliment to the divine being. 

Note 4, Page 64. 
See A. Bolliger, Anti-Kant, Bd. L, Strassburg, 1882, p. 
223 et seq. 

Note 5, Page 67. 
Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, currently and legiti- 
mately employs the expression, ' ' pure physical science " 
(reine Naturwissenschafi), to denote the science of nature as 
a sensible object, or, all knowledge which is conditioned and 
determined, as to its content, by "sensible affection." Com- 
pare Kant's Critique, of Pure Reason : a Critical Exposition, 
in Griggs's Philosophical Classics, chapter v, init. 

Note 6, Page 71. 
Compare above, Lecture VI. 

Note 7, Page 7$. 
In demonstration and development of this truth the phil- 
osophical works of Aristotle and, more notably, of the German 
philosophers from Kant to Hegel, are rich. 

Note 8, Page 73. 
See, for example, Leibnitz, Op. Philos., ed. Erdmann, p. 
202; et passim. How, further, for Leibnitz, activity is not 
motion in space, but is an ideal-spiritual function, no student 
of him requires to have pointed out. 



298 APPENDIX. 

Note 9, Page 74. 
Aristotle, Metaphysics, B. XII, chap. vii. : 1) yap vov kvepyeia 

Note 10, Page 75. 
This distinction is often adverted to by Hegel. See, for 
example, Werke, Bd. XVII. p. 250. In his lectures on the 
History of Philosophy, the criticism which Hegel passes on 
Fichte is, that the final result of his demonstrations is some- 
thing " certain"; but what philosophy is after, adds Hegel, is 
not the certain, but the true. 

Note ii, Page 76. 
To the early demonstration, in modern times, of the onto- 
logical limitations of physical science such philosophers as 
Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Kant contributed most effectively. 
The recognition of these limitations is to-day a commonplace 
with pure physicists. 

Note 12, Page 76. 
Compare, further, British Thought and Thinkers, Chicago, 
1881, p. 296. 

Note 13, Page 77. 
''Absolute matter " is conceived as, in its essence, abso- 
lutely and irretrievably opposed to the essence of "soul" or 
mind. " So, for example, by Descartes. 



a 



Note 14, Page 78. 
Compare subsequent Lectures, and especially Lecture VI. 

Note 15, Page 79. 
This, in the correspondence of Leibnitz with Dr. Sam. 
Clarke, was the burden of the complaint of the former against 
the latter, and against Newton. 



APPENDIX. 299 

Note 16, Page 80. 

They live, move and have their being "in Him," i. e., in 
living dependence on God, the Absolute Spirit. Compare 
Kant's CriL of Pure Reason, in Griggs's Philos. Classics, 
chap. ii. 

Note 17, Page 80. 

Of course, the acknowledgment of spiritual existence by 
the theoretical or practical materialist cannot, without self- 
contradiction, be otherwise than merely verbally made. But 
cases of such self-contradiction very often occur, especially in 
popular "thinking." 

Note 18, Page 82. 

See Aristotle's Physics, ii. 8: A natural existence is "one 
which, receiving continuous motion from a principle within 
itself, attains to a definite end. " The inward principle of mo- 
tion is here nothing other than the ' ' end " itself, which latter is 
to the natural object as its ' ' soul, " its essence, its self-realizing 
life, and is the true force, of which all the "motion" of the 
object is but the insubstantial and fleeting phenomenon. 
Thus "final causation," or causation as a living and ideal 
process, whose form is the form of self-realization, is exhibited 
by Aristotle as the precondition, in natural existences, of that 
serial "causation" (i. e., rule or law of sequence among 
phenomena), which alone purely sensible knowledge, or 
"pure physical science," is able to recognize. Leibnitz, 
among other modern philosophers, is rich in demonstrations 
to the same effect. 

Note 19, Page 83. 

Aristotle, De Am'ma, iii. 7: # yocp xivnQiS rov drsXovi 
kv spy Eta. 



300 APPENDIX. 

Note 20, Page 85. 
See, further, Lecture VII. 

Note 21, Page 85. 
Compare note 8 to Lecture IV, below. 

Note 22, Page 86. 
Compare p. 73, above, and Lecture V. 

Note 23, Page 87. 
Compare Lecture VII. 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 

Note i, Page 95. 
One of the pregnant sayings attributed to Buddha is, ' ' All 
that we are is the result of that which we have thought." 

Note 2, Page hi. 
Full of significance, in this connection, are the words of 
the Psalmist (Ps. xlvi. 10), "Be still and know that I am 
God. " Is it not as though the royal speaker were saying to 
us, " Put a quietus on your individual selves, in the matter 
of knowledge; learn that the individual factor in human knowl- 
edge is strictly subservient and instrumental to, and is condi- 
tioned by, an universal factor; so that all true knowledge is, by 
direct implication, the knowledge of Him who is the condi- 
tion of all knowledge, that is, of God, the ' free Spirit. ' " It 
goes, of course, without saying, that what the Psalmist here 
requires is in no sense the negation or stagnation of thought, 
but rather, in reality, the highest, purest, and truest activity 



APPENDIX. 301 

of thought: sham thinking, "free" thinking, thinking that 
has, so far as in it lies, separated itself from the absolute and 
universal conditions of thought, — this it is, to which the 
Psalmist addresses the just and imperial direction, "Be still." 

So Hegel [Philosophic der Religion, Bd. II, p. 227), discuss- 
ing the knowledge of God as Love, and as Triune, says: 
" God exists here only for the thinking man, who holds him- 
self back and is still (der sich still fur sich zuriickhalt). The 
ancients called this Enthusiasm; to apprehend and be con- 
scious of the pure Idea of God, — this is pure theoretical con- 
templation, the highest repose of thought, yet at the same 
time the highest activity. " 

The purest and most perfect expression of the Christian 
consciousness, that is to be found outside the covers of the 
New Testament, is contained, to my mind, in the historic 
prayers of the Church. They are as a cup, full to overflow- 
ing with the richest vintage of the Christian life and with the 
soundest thought of the Christian heart. In one of them, 
which is nearly as old as Christendom, the relation, in true 
thought, between man and God, comes to expression in the 
following supplication: "Grant to us thy humble servants, that 
by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good. " 
See Book of Common Prayer, Fifth Sunday after Easter. 

Note 3, Page hi. 
But most of all to them that seek. No wisdom, no knowl- 
edge, in the genuine sense, is had without an active and sus- 
tained search. In this respect, as in others, the well-verified 
promise is, ' ' Seek, and ye shall find.'" 

Note 4, Page 118. 
Those whose view of the scriptural revelation is of this me- 
chanical nature are inclined and accustomed to lay stress on 



302 APPENDIX. 

the fact that the revelation is from God, but do not appre- 
hend it as a real, living, and effective revelation <9/"God. 

Note 5, Page 119. 
And the notion of self, like that of personality, is a poten- 
tially infinite or all-comprehending notion. 

Note 6, Page 120. 
Just as, for philosophy, all final or absolute truth is truth 
of life — the Absolute Reality is an Absolute Life — so all gen- 
uine revelation is the revelation of a life; it "brings life .... 
to light "; and it must therefore itself, in order to be effective, 
be clad in or, rather, instinct with the life which it reveals. 
The true Christian revelation is the Christ himself. In him 
was the life made manifest, and this life was the ' ' light of the 
world." Misunderstood or, even, verbally denied this light 
might be, and yet it — the light of the divine life — was there, 
in the minds and hearts of all men, as the very ' ' light of the 
world." Those who, by dint of magnifying, whether theo- 
retically or practically, the finite, individual self, and ignoring 
the universal Self, in which they really lived, and moved, and 
had their being (and this is the abstract description of all sin), 
did not consciously have "God in all their thoughts" — i. e., 
saw not, or even denied, the light that was in them — these 
found this light reflected and focused in the spiritual person 
of a perfect Man, and of one who, just because he was perfect 
Man, was God-man, Jesus, the Christ. And so the revelation 
was effected, not of something previously remote, far-off, in- 
accessible to human "faculties," and so (in particular) for 
ever and hopelessly beyond the grasp of human intelligence, 
but rather of a light divine, which was and is the ever-present 
and indispensable condition of all intelligence and is intrin- 
sically more "knowable," in the Aristotelian — and just — 



APPENDIX. 303 

sense of this term, than aught else. — The living Christ, I say, 
is the true revelation; and the recorded words of Christ, and, 
in general, the words of Scripture, are primarily and most 
truly a revelation, only so far as they, being " words of life," 
awaken in man the sense of a life which is the true light of the 
world, is divine, and is ''eternal." 

I cannot forbear, in this connection, to bear witness to the 
pregnant significance of the chapters on ' ' Revelation " in Mr. 
Elisha Mulford's work, The Republic of God (Boston, 1881). 
The studious perusal of them is, in my judgment, to be heartily 
commended to all who possess a thoughtful interest in the 
subject. 

Note 7, Page 120. 

How love, in organic identity with intelligence, is of the 
very essence of spirituality, we shall have occasion to see in 
the next lecture. Here I mention only that for St. John, 
"dwelling in the truth" and "dwelling in love" are one and 
the same thing. ' ' We know that the Son of God is come, 
and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him 
that is true; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus 
Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life" (1 John v. 
20). "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in 
God, and God in him" (1 John iv. 16). 

A man of thought, approaching the consideration of this 
subject by the way of Philosophy, considered as Science of 
Knowledge — i. e. , by way of the very science of the nature and 
fundamental conditions of intelligent, living experience — says, 
1 ' Love, in the most comprehensive sense, is a desisting from 
the limitation of the heart to its own particular point [to the 
purely individual self], and the reception of the love of God 
into the heart is the reception of the unfolding of his Spirit, 
in which all true and objective content of intelligence and of 



304 APPENDIX. 

love is contained, and which, thus received, eats away all of 
the heart's [vainly self-centred] particularity" (Hegel, Philos. 
der Religion, ii. , 390]. By the flame of true, objective love 
(in distinction from merely subjective sentimentality), as by the 
flame of true, objective intelligence (as distinguished from the 
pure phenomenalism of mere "Subjective Idealism," or "In- 
dividualism "), the "gnats of subjectivity " are singed. Truly, 
' ' Spirit itself, named in the language of feeling, is eternal love. 
The Holy Spirit is eternal Love" (id., 227). 

Note 8, Page 121. 

" Now, " says the Apostle, "I know in part" (1 Cor. xiii. 
12). St. Paul, obviously, does not mean that his present 
knowledge is to such degree partial knowledge that it is es- 
sentially false; and still less that it is as good as no knowledge 
at all. The difference between his present knowledge and 
the knowledge which is to come is one of degree, and not of 
kind. It is a difference, as we may say, not in respect of uni- 
versal principle, but only of special detail. From this point of 
view one may easily estimate the value of such not uncommon 
utterances as the following: "The truth can always be known 
only by the few" (E. von Hagen, Kritische Betrachtung der 
ivichtigsten Grundlehren des Christenthums, p. 119). Per contra, 
the "truth, ,; and nothing else, is of a nature to be known by 
all, if not necessarily in adequate expression, yet at all events 
in its practical power, significance, and reality. The more 
universal (in the true sense) it is, so much the more "know- 
able " is it, and so much the more is it adapted to simple ex- 
pression and to universal apprehension. Its complexity of 
detail in application is the "unsearchable" (inexhaustible) 
and difficult element in it. 

I must add that, in the phrase immediately following the 
one above cited from St. Paul's wonderful hymn to "Charity," 



APPENDIX. 305 

there is contained, by obvious implication, a striking agree- 
ment with the final results of our ontological analyses, as 
founded on the science of knowledge. The Apostle says, 
' ' Then shall I know even as also I am known. " The argu- 
ment which we may easily read into, or from, the writer's 
words is: — The first and immediate fact is that "I know," 
though only ' ' in part. " And the correlative truth is that, in 
the final and absolute ' ' object " of my knowledge, I am con- 
fronted, not with a mere impersonal, dead and brute, unin- 
telligible and ' ' unknowable " Somewhat, but (agreeably, as 
we must say, to the philosophic demonstration of the organic 
unity of subject and object in knowledge) with an object which 
is, like myself, a subject, a Spirit, and by whom ' ■ also I am 
known." The very condition of my knowing any thing is 
thus that I also be known; and he, by whom I am known, the 
absolute Object of my knowledge, is himself absolute in knowl- 
edge. When my union with him becomes perfect, being 
henceforth wholly mistress of the conditions of space and time, 
and no longer materially limited by them, "then shall I know 
even as also I am known." Then shall I have, not a new 
kind, but a new degree of knowledge: the imperfect will give 
place to the perfect; and whereas I now "see through a glass, 
darkly," I shall then see "face to face." 



NOTES TO LECTURE V. 

Note i, Page 138. 

The identity in essential kind and in generic description be- 
tween the process of love and the process of intelligence — as 
also the process of life — is indicated further on in this Lee- 



306 APPENDIX. 

ture (V). The express recognition of the truth that Love is, 
so to say, the energizing principle of the Absolute Intelligence 
and the Absolute Life, is due, in philosophy, historically to 
that practical explication of the implicit content of human con- 
sciousness or human intelligence, which was introduced in 
Christianity. In ancient philosophy this truth, in all its am- 
plitude of significance, was not fully perceived and expressed, 
but it was not " belied/' The rather it was positively, even 
if also only faintly and for the most part unconsciously, ad- 
umbrated. So, for example, in the Platonic conception of 
God as absolutely "the Good" and "without envy"; — it is in 
the unenvious goodness of God that Plato finds the reason of 
the world's existence. Aristotle finds the ascription to God 
of a positive, outgoing, and conscious relation to the world — 
such as love implies — to be inconsistent with the conception 
he has formed of the divine perfection. But he finds a nisus 
toward the divine to be the inherent principle of movement 
in all natural existences. " God," he says, "moves the world 
in the same way in which an object loved moves its lover. " 
An instinctive love of God leads all things to realize in them- 
selves, ' ' as far as possible, " the divine likeness. 

I need not attempt to follow the fortunes of the truth in 
question, in the history of philosophic thought during the 
Christian era. I mention only that in the essentially superfi- 
cial, mock-reverential, mechanico-deistical theology, which 
has monopolized — or, rather, strangled — so much of the nom- 
inally Christian thought of the last five centuries, God is at 
most only verbally recognized as love. A loving God means 
an Absolute, which does not separate and withhold itself from 
the relative and finite, but attests, manifests, demonstrates its 
own absolute and infinite quality by its constant creative and 
redemptive presence in and upon the relative and finite. But 
to a mechanical theology, where the relative is, there God is 



APPENDIX. 307 

not. The relative is an impenetrable vail, behind which God 
is completely hidden. God is thus not Love; he is the Un- 
known and the Unknowable. 

Note 2, Page 145. 
Formal logic, considered as the simple application of the 
principle of abstract identity and contradiction, furnishes at 
most only the anatomy of thought. It grasps the skeleton, 
and not the pulsating life, of existence. It deals with the me- 
chanical relations of parts, and not with the organic articu- 
lation of a living whole. Formal logic lays its hand on a 
single part of an organism — and in the present particular case, 
I am thinking of the organism of intelligence — and calls it 
"A," and then on another, which it calls " B," and so on; and 
then views and demonstrates their mechanical relations. But 
the sense of "A" and ' ' B " and of their relations, as instru- 
mental to and members in a "life of the whole" — or as "par- 
ticulars," through which a living, "concrete universal" real- 
izes itself — is missed. The results reached are "correct" or 
"certain," as far as they go; but the concrete, vital truth of 
the case in hand is not reached. 

" the parts in his hand he may hold and class, 

But the spiritual link is lost, alas ! " 

—Goethe's Faust, Part i, Sc. 4. 

Note 3, Page 147. 
"We cannot naturalize the 'human mind' without pre- 
supposing that which is neither nature nor natural, though 
apart from it nature would not be — that of which the desig- 
nation as 'mind/ as 'human,' as 'personal,' is of secondary 
importance, but which is eternal, self-determined, and thinks. " 
Prof. T. H. Green, Humes Treatise on Human Nature, Intro- 
duction, Vol. I. p. 299, London, 1874. 



308 APPENDIX. 

Note 4, Page 148. 
This "trinity" — or, the concrete unity of human intelli- 
gence — is, nevertheless, and obviously, not absolute, because 
subject to the law of time and of temporal development. The 
mechanical relations of subject and object in human intelli- 
gence are, as we have seen, not only instrumental to such 
intelligence, but also constitute for it a (moving) limit; 
whence, also, as indicated in Lect. II., man, through his 
intelligence, only imitates, but does not fill, the role of the 
head of the universe. Or, as indicated in our text, man, 
through his intelligence, images, but does not reproduce, the 
divine trinity; he is ' ' in the image " of God, but he is not 
God. 

Note 5, Page 153. 
We have seen that God, as Absolute Spirit, is the absolute 
correlative object to the relative human subject. By the prin- 
ciple of the necessary organic unity of subject and object in 
knowledge, it follows that the absolute nature of the latter 
must be reflected in the former. Grant that seeing God in 
this reflection alone is seeing him in a glass darkly. The 
doctrine of the divine Trinity, as founded on objective facts, 
illuminates human intelligence by setting before it an object 
which is seen to meet the ideal and essential requirements of 
the subject. 

Note 6, Page 158. 
It is very necessary never to forget that intelligence, life, 
and love are names of processes, activities, whose form is that 
of self-realization. They are not "products," except so long 
as the conditioning and creative processes are maintained. 



APPENDIX. 309 



NOTES TO LECTURE VI. 

Note i, Page 179. 

An important part of the answer to the last question in the 
text falls, for treatment, under the subject of the next Lec- 
ture (VII). 

Note 2, Page 181. 

The text indicates the way in which theological mechanism 
and agnosticism plays into the hands of ' ' scientific " agnos- 
ticism. For illustration, see H. Spencer's First Principles, 
Part I. 

Note 3, Page 191. 

When sense has abstracted from all but that which it can 
perceive or imagine, the residue is pure, brute world-dust, 
or "bare matter." But as the conception of this residue is 
the result of a work of abstraction, and not of a process of 
concrete comprehension and demonstration, it follows that the 
content or putative object of the conception is, taken by itself, 
unreal. What is taken for ' ' bare matter " is but the phe- 
nomenon of the presence of an Absolute Life; and it is no 
wonder if the experimental "philosopher" sees in it some- 
thing more than "mere matter," viz., the "potentiality of 
life." 

Note 4, Page 192. 

The form of the natural process is, I say, the form of self- 
realization. The potentiality, which stands at the beginning 
of the process, and the actuality, which crowns its end, have 
both the same definition. The movement of the process is 
thus, as it were, a movement from self to self. — On the con- 



310 APPENDIX, 

nection between the New Testament Logos-doctrine and the 
cognate conceptions of earlier Greek philosophy, compare, 
among others, G. Teichmiiller, Geschichte des Begrijfs der 
Parusie, being vol. iii. of the author's Aristotelische Forschung- 
en, Halle, 1873. 

Note 5, Page 195. 
In popular conceptions creation means the origination or 
sequence of the world in time, or, so-called "mechanical 
causation. " The absurdities of this view I have not now to 
point out, nor have I to show how the essence of no truly 
causal or "creative" process is to be found in any temporal 
relation of sequence, whether "regular" and "invariable," 
or only "unique" or single. The fundamental element in 
the Christian conception of creation or causation is "redemp- 
tion," as, in the philosophic conception, it is (with change 
of term, but not of meaning) "realization." 

Note 6, Page 198. 
And also as philosophy must and does conceive it. It is 
only an abstract, sense-conditioned ' ' metaphysics, " knowing 
none but physico-mechanical categories, that can see in the 
existence of the world a possible limit to the divine absolute- 
ness and infinitude. 



NOTES TO LECTURE VII. 

Note i, Page 214. 
Tommaso Traina, La morale di Herbert Spencer, Torino, 
1881, p. 11. 



APPENDIX. 311 

Note 2, Page 216. 
The generic identity of what is here termed the "modern 
method," with the method which in ancient times was applied 
by Epicurus to the determination of moral questions, is ex- 
pressly recognized by Prof. Traina, as indeed it is by all those 
who employ it. 

Note 3, Page 217. 
The epithet "metaphysical," as employed in the text, is 
applicable to any ostensibly philosophical inquiry, which is 
carried on with the use of uncriticised and uncomprehended 
categories. 

Note 4, Page 230. 
Compare note 4 to Lecture VI. 



NOTES TO LECTURE VIII. 

Note i, Page 253. 
O. Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher Grund- 
lage, Berlin, 1878, p. 255: Religion is " Sache des ganzen 
ungelheilten Geisteslebens. " 

Note 2, Page 255. 
Take the first book on the nature of art, or the first biogra- 
phy of a great artist, which may come to hand, and, if the 
work be executed with the slightest touch of philosophic in- 
sight, you will meet with recognition or illustration of the 
truth implied in the phrase, "infinite personality of the ar- 
tist." So, for instance, in one of the days when this course 
of lectures was in progress of delivery, I took up, by way of 



312 APPENDIX. 

diversion, in an hour of leisure, a pamphlet entitled "Das 
Musikalisch-Schdne : Vortrag von S. Bagge; Basel, 1882 "; and 
there I found (p. 20) the truth expressed that the "original- 
ity " of the artist does not always date from the beginning 
of his physical existence, or individual consciousness, ' ' but 
is developed in proportion as the artist becomes more firmly 
self-centred and conscious, " i. e. , just in proportion as he de- 
velops his true personality, and becomes conscious of the same. 
And then I found the cases of the great masters of musical 
composition cited in a way to show that by the development 
of their personality they were not separated from the ' ' spirit 
of their times," but were, the rather, identified with it; it be- 
came their own spiritual substance and their works expressed 
it; and yet more, I found that the greater these artists were, 
so much the more was their "genius," their "inspiration," 
or the spiritual substance of their personality found to be uni- 
versal, or identical, not merely with the "spirit of their times," 
but with the "spirit of the world." — It is but a special ap- 
plication of the same truth that Ruskin has in mind, when he 
writes, ' 'And so, finally, I now positively aver to you that no- 
body, in the graphic arts, can be quite rightly a master of 
anything, who is not master of everything ! " (Ariadne Florentina, 

§ 56). 

Note 3, Page 256. 

It is well known that Schelling found at one time in the 
philosophy of art the key, and the goal, for all philosophy. 

See Schelling's Akademisches Studium, last Lecture; and 
Transcendental Idealism, by Prof. John Watson, in Griggs's 
Philosophical Classics, Chicago, 1882, chap. vii. 

Note 4, Page 259. 
From this judge the truth of such a statement as the follow 
ing: — " A religion is the philosophy of many; a philosophy is 



APPENDIX. 313 

the religion of a few"; see F. Schultze, Philosophie der Natur- 
wissenschaft. 2. Theil, p. 418, Leipzig, 1882. 

Note 5, Page 259. 
Clemens Alexandr. : Faith z=dvrrojuos yvGo6i$; knowl- 
edge = 7ti6nS hiti6rr}fxoviKr}. 

Note 6, Page 263. 
And Aristotle may be taken as spokesman, not only for 
himself, but also for his spiritual progenitors, Plato and Soc- 
rates. 

Note 7, Page 274. 
There is indeed a so-called "reason," the " supersedure " 
of which is an indispensable condition, not only of spiritual 
salvation, or of the entrance into the heart of true religion, 
but also of the very existence of a truly positive and substan- 
tial philosophy itself. To this truth the whole history and 
the intrinsic nature, both of religion and philosophy, bear di- 
rect and abundant witness. The "reason" in question is one 
whose whole industry is absorbed in the detection of abstract 
contradictions and identities. Its spirit and its weapons are 
only mechanical and dead, not organic and living. It is ab- 
stract, and not concrete. All its logic is formal (see above, 
note 2, to Lect. V.), and not substantial. It is "metaphys- 
ical," dealing with "uncriticised categories" (see, again, note 
3, to Lect. VII.), and not philosophical. Its "dialectic" is 
subjective, artificial, and superficial, not objective, contentful, 
and dictated by the essential nature of whatever may happen 
to be the subject of its inquiry. In short, and in fact, it is 
sense-conditioned reason-ing, and not sense-conditioning rea- 
son. The Germans distinguish these two under different 
names, calling the former Ver stand, or "understanding," — as 



314 APPENDIX. 

though its characteristic work were best described as consist- 
ing in arresting, or bringing to a standstill;' the living, mov- 
ing process of reality, with a view to the separate, analytical 
examination of its parts and of the mode of their mechanical 
combination. To the pure understanding, reason proper and 
all its objects — all living, organic wholes, and all vitally syn- 
thetic processes — are a mystery and incredible. What reason, 
as a faculty whose seat is at the very centre of human experi- 
ence, perceives, is imperceptible for the understanding. Rea- 
son is the faculty of insight, i. e. , of essential, thoroughly and 
completely objective, or experimental intelligence; understanding 
is the faculty — if I may so express myself — of outsighi, or of 
superficial, e?npirical, contingent information respecting ex- 
ternal particulars, viewed in abstraction and separation from 
their essential and vital ground. 

To men of the eighteenth century "reason" meant "un- 
derstanding"; and the self-styled "Age of Reason" was, ac- 
cordingly, not the age of true, concrete, vital reason — which, 
in operation, is simply equivalent to experience taking true and 
complete and unprejudiced account of herself — but rather the age 
of ' ' reasons, " of argument or alleging of " reasons " pro and 
con, and of consequent "doubt," respecting all that can be 
made a subject of argument — as everything can. — Let us not, 
then, confound the ' ' reason " of Thomas Paine with the rea- 
son of Aristotle or of philosophy. And, finally, let us not 
forget that, while any true revelation may be expected to tran- 
scend and confound the "reasonings" of an unvitalized "un- 
derstanding," the very condition of its reception is the exist- 
ence of reason, as also the condition of its effectiveness is that 
by it reason finds itself truly illuminated. 

As matter of fact, philosophy has received illumination 
from the Christian consciousness in regard to its three funda- 
mental conceptions, of the Absolute, of Nature, and of Man. 



APPENDIX. 315 

And let it be remembered that when I say "philosophy," I 
do not mean any mere jargon of words, nor any arbitrary col- 
lection of dogmatic opinions, but philosophic science — the 
science, in the strictest sense, of experience, and of experi- 
ence taken in the deepest, most comprehensive, truest and 
richest sense of the term. Under the influence of the Chris- 
tian consciousness, then, philosophy has come to a more defi- 
nite and complete conception of the concrete, living unity of 
the Absolute, as Spirit. It has, secondly, been enabled to 
conceive and comprehend more distinctly the personal, living 
relation of the divine Logos to the world. It need hardly be 
said that, in proportion as this relation is distinctly conceived 
and its truth perceived, the possibility of a lapse into pure 
naturalism or pure pantheism is taken away. And, thirdly, 
Christianity has contributed to philosophy a fuller sense, and 
demonstration, of the truth that man is made perfect man, not 
through mere "imitation" of God, or "resemblance" to him, 
but "in one" with him, by an organic union which, so far 
from interfering with his freedom, is the very condition of his 
true — i. e., his spiritual — freedom and of his true spiritual 
personality. 

Note 8, Page 275. 
Hegel, Philosophie der Religion, Part III. 



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